Clarifying the Reform Bill

August 1st, 2007 by Paul Blumenthal · 1 Comment

Just to clarify what is going on with the lobbying and ethics reform bill, the Legislative Accountability and Transparency Act of 2007 was passed by the House and the Senate will take it up tomorrow. This bill is somewhat different from the original reform bills passed by the House and the Senate earlier in the year. In case you weren’t following, the House and Senate each passed different reform bills but then faced an obstacle when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) put a hold on the naming of conferees to a conference committee. The Democratic House and Senate leadership, along with relevant Democratic members, then sat down and crafted this current bill. The bill will not go to conference because the House and Senate will be voting on a new bill that is crafted to avoid a conference. There are no differences between what the Senate passed and what the House passed. There are, however, provisions in the bill which only apply to the House and provisions which only apply to the Senate. Think of this bill as a bill that has gone to conference – just without including the minority in negotiations.

Tags: OpenHouse

1 response so far ↓

Joshua Tauberer // Aug 1, 2007 at 5:48 pm

There *were* differences between what was passed. Many insubstantial (like a reorganization of the whole bill), but a few that were quite meaningful, as I outlined in my post.

But thanks for the info about the avoiding of a conference committee. Very…. sneaky.