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NRL News House Joins Senate in Rejecting Limits on Communications to Grassroots Public WASHINGTON (May 29, 2007)—A coalition of groups, in which National Right to Life (NRLC) was a key participant, has been successful in blocking a push to enact a new federal law that would have regulated communications to the public about what is going on in Congress. Since the new Democratic-controlled Congress convened in January, a coalition of liberal special-interest groups has urged Congress to pass a law to regulate “campaigns” of ads, mailings, phone calls, and other methods by which various organizations alert members of the public to legislation under consideration in Congress, and encourage them to express their opinions on a pending legislative matter—activities referred to by some as “grassroots lobbying.” The groups pushing for such regulation include Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, OMB Watch, the League of Women Voters, and others. NRLC was joined by other groups, including the Family Research Council, the National Rifle Association, the American Center for Law and Justice, Focus on the Family, the Home School Legal Defense Association, the Free Speech Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others, in opposing regulation of communications to grassroots citizens. The initial clash occurred in the Senate in January, when the Senate took up an omnibus “lobbying reform” bill. While most of the bill (S. 1) dealt with regulation of Washington-based professional lobbyists and related issues, the bill also contained one provision—originally sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Ct.) and Carl Levin (D-Mi.)—to require registration and reporting by individuals or groups that spent or received more than $25,000 for “paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying.” The bill defined “grassroots lobbying” as “the voluntary efforts of members of the general public to communicate their own views on an issue to Federal officials or to encourage other members of the general public to do the same.” When the bill reached the Senate floor, pro-life Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) offered an NRLC-backed amendment to strike the Levin-Lieberman provision from the bill, and the amendment passed, 55–43. Therefore, the “lobbying reform” bill that passed the Senate did not contain any language to regulate “grassroots” campaigns. (See “Elitist Special-Interest Groups Lobby Congress to Curb ‘Grassroots Lobbying’,” February 2007 NRL News, page 9, posted at www.nrlc.org/FreeSpeech/NRLCFightsforGrassrootsLobbying.html.) Following the Senate vote, the pro-regulation groups then began to put pressure on the leading House Democrats to include a similar provision in the House version of “lobbying reform” legislation. Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, told National Journal, “They succeeded narrowly in getting it [the grassroots provision] removed in the Senate, but we are going to get it back in the House.” The chief House advocate for such restrictions, Congressman Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), on May 1 introduced a new version as a freestanding bill, H.R. 2093. Pro-regulation groups insisted that the new proposal was “narrower” than the language that the Senate had rejected. But NRLC promptly provided House offices with a detailed analysis that demonstrated that the Meehan proposal was even more expansive, in some respects, than the original Lieberman-Levin proposal. The Meehan proposal would have required registration and reporting by individuals or groups that receive or spend as little as $100,000 in a quarter on “paid communications campaigns to influence the general public to lobby Congress.” “The Meehan Amendment would force countless individual Americans and groups to register and report as ‘lobbying firms,’ merely because they ‘influence’ fellow citizens to contact Congress or officials of the executive branch on policy matters,” explained NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson and Congressional Liaison Susan Muskett in a May 4 letter to House members. The letter pointed out that a person who helped a group purchase a single full-page ad in a big-city newspaper could be forced to register as a “lobbying firm” under the Meehan proposal. The showdown came on May 17, when the House Judiciary Committee considered amendments to the broader “lobbying reform” legislation (H.R. 2316). Meehan offered his proposal as an amendment—only to see it opposed by a fellow Democrat, the very liberal chairman of the committee, Rep. John Conyers (Mi.). “I have been influenced by the communications from the American Civil Liberties Union, and even the National Rifle Association, National Right to Life,” Chairman Conyers told the committee. “Citizens have a constitutional right to contact their elected representatives on any issue. Regulation, particularly when accompanied by penalties for failure to completely comply with all the regulations, can chill free speech no less than an outright censorship ban can.” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, spoke in favor of the Meehan Amendment. But three other committee members—ranking Republican Lamar Smith (Tx.), Artur Davis (D-Al.), and Dan Lungren (R-Ca.)—spoke against it. Although Meehan claimed his amendment was a regulation of lobbyists, Lungren argued that “it has nothing to do with what is currently considered to constitute lobbying under law. ... Let me just suggest that activities aimed at increasing the involvement of the general public, no matter who it is—left, right, in between, people we agree with, people we disagree with—doesn’t pose a threat to the ethical integrity of this institution.” The committee then defeated the Meehan Amendment on a voice vote. When the general lobbying reform came to the House floor the following week Meehan made no attempt to revive the amendment. A House-Senate conference committee must still meet to work out various differences between the “lobbying reform” bills passed by the Senate (S. 1) and the House (H.R. 2316). However, since the provisions dealing with grassroots communications did not win approval in either house, they should not be considered by the conference committee. NRLC’s Johnson said, “The defeat of the Meehan Amendment, and its predecessor in the Senate, is an important victory for grassroots-based movements like the pro-life movement. This victory is due to an outpouring of opposition to the idea of officeholders regulating the right of private groups to communicate with the public about what is going on in Congress.” However, despite the victory on the “grassroots” issue, Johnson warned that there will be additional attacks on citizen advocacy groups during the current Congress. One of the chief threats is a bill sponsored by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.), H.R. 984. The bill is formally titled the “Executive Branch Reform Act” but referred to by some critics as “The Big Brother Act.” It would require establishment of a publicly accessible database, into which about 9,000 Executive Branch officials would be required to file reports listing every letter, e-mail, fax, and verbal communication that they receive from any “private party” in which the communicator “seeks to influence official action by any officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States.” The bill defines “private party” as any person, other than another government official or staff person. “Under the Waxman ‘Big Brother Act,’ it would no longer be possible for any private citizen to express an opinion about a federal government policy, without that communication becoming a matter of public record,” explained NRLC’s Johnson. Further information on the Waxman bill is found in an article by Douglas Johnson and Susan Muskett, posted at http://www.nrlc.org/FreeSpeech/WaxmanDavisArticle.pdf.
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