ENHANCING LOBBYING DISCLOSURE

As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, sunshine is the best disinfectant. A crucial part of reforming the way lobbyists interact with members of Congress and the Executive Branch is to make sure that records are kept and made available to the public. The Special Interest Lobbying and Ethics Accountability Act:

• Requires lobbyists to file financial disclosures quarterly rather than semi-annually as under current law.
• Requires electronic filing of lobbying reports to ensure timely public access.
• Mandates that the Clerk of the House create a searchable, sortable, web-based, downloadable, and publicly available database for lobbyist disclosure.
• Directs the Clerk of the House and the FEC to establish a system to provide direct hyperlinks between information disclosed by registered lobbyists and campaign finance disclosures for federal candidates.
• Requires registered lobbyists to disclose members of Congress and senior executive branch officials with whom they have made lobbying contacts for the purposes of influencing legislation or public policy.
• Requires public reporting by registered lobbyists of all past senior-level legislative branch and executive branch employment.  (The current requirement for the legislative branch only goes back two years).
• Requires federal lobbyists to disclose amounts spent on grassroots lobbying.
• Identifies members of anonymous lobbying coalitions by requiring members of lobbying coalitions to report their involvement.