Lobbying: Cleaning It Up : Rightly, Congress moves to restrict gifts

The process by which the Congress of the United States makes the laws of the country is one in which there are properly many participants other than the legislators themselves. Legislators are, after all, representatives, and the public has a right to make its views known not just individually but also collectively. The name for all this is, hang on, lobbying.

How does it happen that so legitimate an activity comes to seem so illegitimate? This happens when private interests do more than just make their views known to the custodians of public welfare but attempt, by spending money on them, to turn them into custodians of private welfare. Lobbying in this form accounts for the finding, by a 1992 New York Times/ CBS News poll, that 75% of Americans believe that government serves a few big private interests rather than the people as a whole.

There are broadly two ways to regulate the excesses of lobbying: One is to reform the recipients, the legislators; the other is to reform the donors, the private interests out to shape public policy. The first way consists mainly of measures, codes of ethics and the like, that seek to improve the righteousness of legislators. Such codes have proliferated in recent years, and the result? Well, the most common result has been a polishing of speeches by legislators who insist that though they have accepted favors, they have never allowed them to affect their thinking. But the move to “reform” the legislators has taken on new strength, thanks to bills passed, against considerable odds, by the House and on Wednesday by the Senate. The Senate action, the strictest gift-reform measure ever passed by either house of Congress, bans virtually all gifts, meals, travel and entertainment paid for by lobbyists, special-interest groups and even ordinary constituents. The Senate bill must be reconciled by a joint Senate-House conference with the less restrictive House version.

Sometimes only a fine line separates legitimate participation in representative government, with related expenses that are legitimate business expenses, on the one hand, and illegitimate attempts to exert undue influence on lawmakers on the other. Policing that line will take some doing. Attempts to fudge the difference will be many. Along the way, some legitimate activities may be tarred as illegitimate.

But give the U.S. Congress credit for recognizing that it had to clean up its act or begin losing the capacity to govern at all. The right to vote may create representative government. But what makes the vote work is the public trust that, once elected, the representatives will actually represent the people. These bills give the public trust at least a fighting chance.