Senator Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., released the following statement after the passage of a lobbying reform bill in the House of Representatives.
"The House has passed a shell of a lobbying reform bill unworthy of the name ‘reform.’ Unlike the Senate bill, it does not ban gifts from lobbyists, does not tighten the revolving door for former Members of Congress who become lobbyists, and imposes no disclosure requirements on lobbyists who conduct massive grassroots campaigns to influence votes in Congress. The lobbyist disclosures requirements in the House bill also fall far short of what we passed in the Senate. The House could not even bring itself to take the small step of requiring mandatory ethics training for its Members.
"What's worse, the House Republican leadership has made sure that lobbying reform has little chance of enactment by attaching an entirely unrelated and deeply divisive bill regulating Section 527 groups. I support the McCain-Feingold 527 reform bill, but I condemn this cynical effort to add a poison pill to what should be an easily passable lobbying reform effort.”
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