A Cause That Can’t Be Talked to Death : GOP filibuster blocks lobbying/campaign reform, but obstructionism won’t have final say

After 24 years as president of the public interest group Common Cause, Fred Wertheimer has reason to say, as he did last Tuesday, that it is time for him to move on. Sadly, however, Wertheimer’s last Common Cause news releases are an indirect commentary on the blind congressional obstructionism that is driving good people away from public service.

Wertheimer’s last releases scored the Republican-led filibuster that successfully blocked a reform banning gifts from lobbyists to members of Congress and requiring that the names of contributors to political action committees be disclosed. On this issue, the will of the voters is overwhelmingly clear, and the first Senate votes respected it. The ban on lobbyist gifts to members of Congress, including lobbyist-paid travel and contributions to entities controlled by members of Congress, initially passed in the Senate on a 95-4 vote. The requirement that the names of contributors to PACs be disclosed passed 95 to 2.

Unfortunately, after final House approval, when the bills came up for final Senate approval, 38 senators, of whom 32 are Republicans, joined in a filibuster against the very reform they had first endorsed. They did not have the votes to defeat it, so they talked it to death.

In opposing the bill, the Republicans exaggerated the impact of a provision added by the House in conference that would have made lobbying disclosure rules apply to all PACs, including grass-roots organizations. But when Majority Leader George J. Mitchell and the Democrats offered to delete this part of the bill, the only part to which objection had been made, the Republicans declined the offer.

Why? On the eve of an election, the Republicans preferred to have a do-nothing Congress to run against rather than a did-something Congress that might reflect credit on the majority party. Asked why he had switched his vote, Minority Leader Bob Dole said, disingenuously, that he had not read the bill carefully enough. Virtually every non-incumbent candidate running for Congress runs against Congress. To that extent, the worse Congress looks, the better it is for congressional challengers. But when this premise leads to the conclusion, “Let’s make Congress look as bad as possible and hope the electorate turns to us,” the real losers are the voters.

The voters certainly lose when the lobbyists and PACs win, but Common Cause will return to this fray, and Wertheimer, who has served his organization and the country well, will live to fight another day. Thanks in good measure to the efforts of Common Cause, this issue is not going to go away.