Two weeks after the election, attention has turned to considering what the results mean for government priorities and the likely impacts on the way Congress operates. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are working on an agenda for the 110th Congress that includes ethics and lobbying reform proposals as part of their "100 Hours" initiative. As incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, "We will start by cleaning up Congress, breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation and commit to pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending."

Lobbying reform is a high profile topic since exit polls revealed that corruption was one of the main issues to energize voters in this midterm election. Forty-one percent of those polled said that corruption and scandal was a very important issue in their vote for the House. This is consistent with a Democracy Corps poll taken the weekend before the election. According to the poll, ethics and corruption were among the top issues for Republicans who intended to vote for a Democrat.

Both the House and the Senate passed broad ethics bills (HR 4975, S 2349) this past year, but they were not able to resolve differences between the two bills. The primary obstacle was whether regulation of independent 527 organizations should be expanded. (It was included in the House bill, but not the Senate version.) In addition, the Senate bill, passed in March, includes a provision requiring disclosure of grassroots lobbying expenses over a certain threshold, but this requirement is not in the House version.

While details of the Democrats’ lobbying reform proposals are not yet available, the agenda for change in January does not include the controversial 527 provision. As the New York Times details, "Their initial proposals, laid out earlier this year, would prohibit members from accepting meals, gifts or travel from lobbyists, require lobbyists to disclose all contacts with lawmakers and bar former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from entering the floor of the chambers or Congressional gymnasiums." More ambitious proposals may also be added. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told the Times "The dynamic is different now."

Reform advocates see the switch in power as an opportunity to restart lobbying and ethical reform legislation. On November 9, six reform groups held a press conference praising Pelosi and calling on her to uphold her pledge to change lobbying and ethics rules. These groups, Public Citizen, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, League of Women Voters, and U.S. PIRG, will be seeking the establishment of an independent office to investigate ethics violations, rather than leave enforcement to congressional ethics committees. Their statement said, "Put simply, the House and Senate ethics committees have no credibility with the American people, and for good cause. With the worst corruption and lobbying scandals in decades, the ethics committees took no public action to hold any member of Congress or any staff member accountable in connection with the scandals. Neither the House nor Senate ethics committees, furthermore, publicly undertook an investigation of Jack Abramoff and his numerous scandalous activities in connection with Members and staff." Obama supports this proposal, but it is opposed by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), who will chair the Rules Committee, because it would create new federal bureaucracy.

Reform issues that are back on the table also include earmark transparency and S. 1508, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which would require electronic filing of Senate campaign contributions. Currently, Senate candidates are not required to file their campaign contributions electronically, unlike all other federal candidates. The Campaign Finance Institute reported that in six Senate races, voters could not retrieve information on election contributions made after June 30.

It is not clear how the House will proceed with its reform legislation, although it is part of the Democrats agenda for the first 100 hours. Pelosi has been discussing the idea of breaking up the reform legislation into separate bills to allow more focus on the corruption issue. For example, there might be a bill on the enforcement issue separate from the ban on travel and gifts from lobbyists. It is likely that pay-as-you-go rule changes will also be part of this overall package of reforms.