Patricia Schroeder: “as I said before, I think this is a terribly important amendment in that it does for profits what we did to nonprofits…”

“as I said before, I think this is a terribly important amendment in that it does for profits what we did to nonprofits earlier this year in an appropriation bill. Earlier this year, the Istook amendment was adopted by this House, and what it did was say that groups, and there are over 460 of them, such as the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross, the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Baptist Joint Committee, the United States Catholic Conference, the YMCA, the YWCA, March of Dimes, Multiple Sclerosis, and on and on and on, would not be allowed to use their own funds to lobby in the Congress. This was called defunding of those groups, and that was thought to be very fair. If that is fair, then it is certainly fair to say to profit groups that are getting huge Government contracts that they also should not be using their funds to lobby Congress in this manner. Now, this amendment is written in exactly the same form as the Istook amendment. It is a limitation on the use of Federal funds by contractors for political advocacy, which means obviously coming to a Federal contractor, having any activity which would be made known to a Federal official or having the authority to obligate or approve or vote for funds that would benefit them.”