Congressional Reform
Curb Abuse of Power and Restore Ethics in Government
Last year alone, the Republican-led Congress earmarked 14,000 projects (up from just 958 in 1996) worth $47 billion to lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff. In 2000, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington was 16,000. Today there are 35,000—65 lobbyists per congressional member. The lobbying industry spent $2.1 billion on federal lobbying in 2004. The consequences for our nation are enormous.
Over the last several years Congress’ rules have been changed to create an apparatus in which corruption has become pervasive. To transform this culture of corruption by the GOP, the Center for American Progress calls for much needed reforms.
The Plan:
• No recorded vote in the House of Representatives or the committee of the whole House can last longer than 20 minutes without the consent of either both floor managers or of both Leaders.
• Amend the House Ethics Code to make it an offense for a Member to condition funding for earmarks requested by another Member on how the requesting Member votes on legislation.
• Amend the House Ethics Code to make it an offense for any Member to advocate an earmark unless that Member discloses whether he or she either has a financial interest in the entity or exercises any control over it, such as appointing members of the organization's board.
• If a rule makes in order text that is different from what the committee of jurisdiction has reported, the rule must provide the chairman or ranking minority member, if requested, a preferential amendment—neither divisible nor amendable unless adopted and all necessary points of order waived—to restore the bill (in whole or in part) to its original form.
• Before the House can adjourn at the end of a session, the House must have conducted 20 or more weeks with at least one recorded vote or quorum call on at least four of the five calendar work days.
• Except for measures on the suspension calendar, the House cannot consider legislation unless printed copies of such legislation have been available to all members of the House for a period of 24 hours. This rule can be waived only if two-thirds of the House votes to consider such a waiver.
• It shall not be in order to consider a conference report unless there has been a formal open meeting of the conference at which all provisions on which the two bodies disagree are open to discussion and the resolution of the differences between the two bodies is approved by a recorded vote of a majority of House appointed conferees.
• It shall not be in order to consider any conference report materially different from what was agreed to by a majority of House conferees in open session and was not part of the final package on which a favorable vote was cast by a majority of House conferees.
The Expert: Scott Lilly
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