Russ Feingold's Statement on the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act"

[flpoljunkie]

Remarks of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act

From the Senate Floor
As Prepared for Delivery

August 2, 2007

MR. FEINGOLD: Mr. President, this should be a proud day for the United States Senate. Many months of work on legislation to reform our nation’s lobbying disclosure laws and the rules that govern our conduct as Senators are about to come to a close. The result is a bill that by any measure must be considered landmark legislation. I am pleased to support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture and support the bill. I want to speak for a few minutes about what is in this bill and the forces that brought us to this moment.

I introduced the first comprehensive lobbying and ethics reform package in the Senate in July 2005, about ten years after enactment of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and the last significant changes to the Senate’s rules on gifts and travel. A decade of experience had exposed the weaknesses in those important pieces of legislation. In light of growing concern about the relationships between certain Members of Congress and Washington lobbyists, I thought it was time to undertake further reform.

In the months that followed, the Jack Abramoff scandal consumed more and more space on the front pages of the newspaper. When he was indicted in December, lobbying and ethics reform all of a sudden got a big burst of momentum in Congress. In the first few months of 2006, radical reform seemed not only possible but likely. Hearings were held, and a bidding war for who could sound the most sincere about fixing the problems that had led to the Abramoff scandal ensued.

Unfortunately, the congressional leadership at the time talked a good game, but was not really committed to reform. The bill that passed the Senate last May fell well short not only of what was needed, but also of what had been promised only a few months earlier. The House leadership waited even longer to act and tried to add controversial campaign finance legislation to the package, dooming it to defeat. The conventional wisdom was that the voters didn’t care, at least that’s what the defenders of the status quo assured themselves as they engineered the stalemate that led to no reform at all being enacted. But they were wrong.

The voters sent a clear message in November 2006 that they were fed up with the way things were going in Washington. And the leaders of the new Congress responded to that message by making lobbying and ethics reform their very top priority. Speaker Pelosi included major changes to the ethics rules in the House in a package of rules changes adopted on the very first day of the session. And Majority Leader Reid introduced an ethics and lobbying reform package as S. 1 and brought it immediately to the Senate floor.

And so we are here today to finish the job. The bill before us is a very strong piece of reform legislation. We have a real ban on gifts from lobbyists, strong new rules governing privately funded travel, a requirement that Senators pay the full charter rate to travel on corporate jets for personal, official or campaign purposes, strengthened revolving door restrictions, and improved lobbying disclosure provisions. And for the first time, the public will get a full accounting, through reports filed by lobbyists, and reports filed by campaigns and party committees, of all the ways that lobbyists provide financial support for the Members of Congress who they lobby.

I am very pleased also that the bill includes provisions to provide greater transparency in the process by which legislation is considered here in the Senate. Finally, after years of failed attempts, secret holds on legislation will be a relic of the past. In addition, out of scope additions to conference reports can be stricken individually rather than bringing down the whole report. All of these items show the seriousness with which this Congress and its new leadership addressed the anger that the American people expressed last November.

Let me say a word about earmarks. I have long been a strong supporter of earmark reform. I have co-sponsored legislation on this topic with the Senator from Arizona, Sen. McCain. Back in January, when the Senate first debated this bill, I broke with my leadership and supported the earmark reform amendment authored by the junior Senator from South Carolina, Sen. DeMint. It is my judgment that the earmark reforms included in the proposal before the Senate today are consistent with the DeMint amendment, much stronger than the original bipartisan leadership proposal that was introduced in January, and an enormous improvement over the way earmarks had been handled by both Democratic and Republican-controlled Congresses in the past. It is simply not accurate to say that the final version of this provision guts the DeMint amendment that the Senate passed early this year. The minor changes that were made certainly do not justify a vote against cloture or against the bill.

Mr. President, the difference between the approach to lobbying and ethics reform this year and last year is this: Last year there was a lot of tough talk, but when it came down to it, the goal was to try to satisfy public outrage but actually do as little as possible. This year, the tough talk was backed up by tough action. This bill includes real reform on things like gifts and earmarks that get a lot of public attention and also on things like secret holds and corporate jets that occur mostly behind the scenes but have a big impact on how things work in Washington.

I want to thank Majority Leader Reid for his steadfast insistence on passing strong legislation. And I want to thank my colleagues for recognizing that regardless of how reforms might inconvenience us or impact our personal lifestyles, our priority must be to convince our constituents that we are here to advocate their best interests, not those of well-connected lobbyists.

Ethical conduct in government should be more than an aspiration, it should be a requirement. That is what this bill is all about. I am proud to support it, and I urge my colleagues to vote “aye” on cloture, and on final passage of the bill.

Thank you Mr. President, I yield the floor.

http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/statements/07/08/20070802ethics.htm

[Bullet1987]

1. This will never get passed...

real ethics reform was never on the Dems To-Do list. Him and Obama sponsored a bill that was 10x better than the half-assed crapped that was passed.

[flpoljunkie]

2. It did pass 83-14. All the NO votes came from Republicans. Link to roll call vote below.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00294

[defendandprotect]

3. Feingold is offering strong leadership; I hope he holds steady and listens to his own instincts ==

not to right-wing/Republican members of the Democratic Party -