The American Bar Association wants tougher federal lobbying rules, including bans on lobbyists soliciting cash for congressmen they lobby

K Street NW in Washington (left), and the U.S. Capitol are shown in this composite. | Jay Westcott/POLITICO, AP Photo

The ABA wants the Lobbying Disclosure Act amended. | Jay Westcott/POLITICO, AP Photo Close

By DAVE LEVINTHAL | 8/10/11 11:47 AM EDT

Federal lobbying laws must be tightened to better regulate the type of governmental lobbying that occurs today, the American Bar Association wrote in a resolution released Wednesday morning.

The ABA recommends that Congress amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act to enact a two-year ban on lobbyists engaging in fundraising efforts for members of Congress they lobby and to narrow the lobbying reporting threshold from 20 percent of one’s professional work to a “reasonable,” but unspecified percentage.

The ABA also recommends that “lobbying support” activities that are not currently matters of public record — strategizing and polling, for example — be disclosed.

“These are common sense solutions to restore the faith of citizens in their elected officials by bringing the business of government out into the sunlight,” said Trevor Potter, a former John McCain legal adviser and FEC commissioner who heads the Campaign Legal Center and served as co-chairman of the ABA’s lobbying regulation task force.

Other ABA recommendations include:

* Banning lobbyists from soliciting campaign contributions to the reelection campaign of a member of Congress “whom the lobbyist has been retained to lobby for an earmark or other narrow financial benefit.”

* Banning lobbyists from entering into a contingent fee contract with a client to “lobby for an earmark or other narrow financial benefit for that client.”

* Transferring Lobbying Disclosure Act enforcement to a “suitable administrative authority and empower that agency to utilize appropriate tools such as rulemaking, investigation, and imposition of civil or administrative penalties.”

Overall, the ABA’s recommendations are excellent, said Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists.

“I would say ‘hallelujah,’” Marlowe said, noting that such reforms would “level the playing field so that you will always know that someone who is lobbying you is actually a lobbyist.”

Marlowe questioned one of the recommendations: the proposed fundraising bans. While campaign finance reform for lobbyists is certainly needed in some fashion, he said, the ABA’s proposal as written is “not practical at all.”

The ABA’s resolution, which on Tuesday unanimously passed the group’s House of Delegates, is the product of Potter and task force co-chairmen Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor and former U.S. solicitor general; Perkins Coie lawyer Rebecca Gordon; and Joseph Sandler of law firm Sandler, Reiff and Young.

The ABA said that numerous other lawyers and academics were also consulted on the resolution.

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