Lobbying can be described as the act of being involved in activities that are paid and entails the hiring of lawyers by people with special interests to argue for precise legislation processes in policymaking groups like the Congress (Kokalitcheva, 2016). It entails acts of influencing policies, actions, and various choices of officials who can include members of the regulatory agencies and legislators. The process of lobbying entails face-to-face and direct contact. Different types of people, organizational groups, and associations often do it. Lobbying can include individuals who are in the private sector, governmental officers, legislators, and companies. An excellent example of lobbying in the country can be the report in which there was an alliance between the consumer advocates and various industry groups to boost the funds that could be used in the fields of Food and Drug Administration. In line with that, this essay will try to analyze various developments in lobbying by looking at the reforms that have been introduced in USA.
One of the greatest lobbying reforms in USA was the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (Hamilton & Hoch, 1997). President Clinton signed this act into the law in December 1995. The bill had the aim of amassing lobbyists and the exact information that they were supposed tom disclose by changing the requirements of reporting. From the act, a lobbyist is defined as an empl0yee or worker who manages to make several lobbying contacts and spends more than 20% of his or her time lobbying. Associations are not referred to as lobbyists, but they are supposed to register on behalf of the lobbying employees. Lobbyists were supposed to have registered within the first 45 days after making their first lobbying contract of an organization. Organizations are supposed to register with the clerk of the House of Representatives and the secretary of Senate. Details of the organizations and the lobbyists must be included comprehensively registration materials. Semi-annual reports must also be added when sharing registration materials and all changes in the information must also be added, and all estimates of expenditure must be added. Other parts added in the act entailed incentives of public access to information, miscellaneous provisions, enforcements, and non-profits.
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On the other hand, there was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. This was more of an improvement of the Federal Election Campaign Act (Straus, 2011). In the act, there were provisions that all donors who were lobbyists or enterprises that employed lobbyists were supposed to disclose PIC donations of not less than $200 on all the lobbying reports resulting from Open Government Act of 2007 (Baran, 2009). On top of that, President Obama also came up with other reforms where bans were imposed on all contributions for lobbyists, corporations and the political action committees in his foundational committee. These prohibit were introduced because of the President, though they were beneficial and prudent in politics. The latter was, however, rolled back in the regime of President Trump by DNC (Marans, 2017). DNC argued that the prohibits were slowing down the implementation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act. From this discussion, it is evident that the Lobbying Disclosure and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform were the most effective reforms and are still in place in the nation today.
References
Baran, J. W. (2009). Money, Politics, and Lobbying. Catholic University Law Review , 58 (4), 913-918.
Hamilton, J. B., & Hoch, D. (1997). Ethical standards for business lobbying: Some practical suggestions. Business Ethics Quarterly , 7 (3), 117-129.
Kokalitcheva, K. (2016). Fortune . Retrieved 18 July 2019, from https://fortune.com/2016/07/13/government-lobbyists-social-media/
Marans, D. (2017). Huffpost.com . Retrieved 18 July 2019, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dnc-pac-contributions-ban_n_58b1ac9ee4b0a8a9b782bb00?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAKO2yHe6AX0zddERzU83UYoI925XqKkWWy5bIIbVTsS7uerOgIceAe1He2LktL1BAXygOAJtS-fR5fE8upbz16Bk3FL-Fp0gsAks6GJowk4esGoOypNS65RrGLwELpoPx0tC_k47nqhTTuVyvLtspDHB4-k-KEA4pxSedg1Pema
Straus, J. R. (2011). Lobbying registration and disclosure: Before and after the enactment of The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 . DIANE Publishing.
