While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) office is still working on the details of grassroots lobbying disclosure as part of a package of Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) reforms, both supporters and opponents have continued to debate the merits of the idea.

The contentious debate over whether big dollar federal grassroots lobbying should be disclosed has continued, despite a general understanding that a House provision is likely to be significantly scaled back from the version rejected by the Senate. On March 7, six reform groups sent a letter to House members outlining support for four major LDA reforms. These include disclosure of bundled campaign contributions from lobbyists and lobby firms, disclosure of grassroots lobbying activities by lobby firms, an increase in the cooling off period before former members of Congress can engage in lobbying activities from one to two years, and a prohibition on lobbyist-paid parties at national political conventions. The six groups are the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG.

The scaled-back grassroots disclosure proposal from the reform groups would only apply to firms hired to carry out grassroots lobbying campaigns if they collect more than $100,000 for such campaigns in a quarter. The firms would be required to register and file reports identifying each client paying more than $50,000 per quarter and the issue involved. The proposal would exempt communications between an organization and its members and those that are primarily aimed at membership recruitment.

This limited approach has been criticized from two different perspectives. OMB Watch has supported bill language that, in addition to requiring grassroots lobby firms to report, also would require firms and groups that already are required to register and report direct lobbying expenses under LDA to also report grassroots expenditures and activities. In a March 19 op-ed in The Hill, Executive Director Gary Bass said, "Disclosure requirements should not and cannot single out particular groups of people, even if a specific segment of people has been the most heavily involved in phony grassroots lobbying campaigns. A better way to approach grassroots lobbying disclosure is to require all actors who meet defined thresholds to disclose their grassroots lobbying activity. This can be done so as not to create burdens on small groups."

Many conservative groups oppose any kind of disclosure regime. At a Cato Institute briefing on March 9, speakers from the ACLU, Cato Institute, American Target Advertising and the Center for Competitive Politics outlined their objections. Their criticisms addressed constitutional issues, claiming registration and disclosure would impose a burden on citizen-to-citizen communications that present no threat of corruption to the system. They also opposed the proposal to limit disclosure to grassroots lobbying firms, saying government regulation should not favor one kind of speaker over another.

Many expect the House Democratic leadership to make a decision as to whether they will support a provision requiring grassroots lobbying disclosure and the scope of such a provision, if included, some time this week. It is not clear when a bill would be brought to the House floor.