Democratic senator wants to expose 'stealth lobbyists'

Sen. Michael Benett
(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has introduced the Lobbying and Campaign Finance Reform Act, a bill that would, among other things, change the way registered lobbyists can support political campaigns and also tweak the requirements for who must register as a lobbyist.

This latter change would be accomplished by nixing the 20 percent rule, which says that only people who spend more than 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities must register as lobbyists. This has allowed many lobbyists to avoid registration, which can obscure lobbying activity from the public.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.