Patricia Schroeder: “I hope that my colleagues can just accept this amendment. I think it is fairly simple. Most of the Members of the body…”

“I hope that my colleagues can just accept this amendment. I think it is fairly simple. Most of the Members of the body voted on an amendment very similar to this recently and that was when we were debating the Labor HHS appropriations. The gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Istook] offered an amendment that said that any recipient of a Federal grant was not allowed to lobby with their non-Federal funds. Non-Federal funds. So as my colleagues may know from many of the articles that have appeared since in the Wall Street Journal and other places, they talk about how the Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, all sorts of groups such as that, will not be able to lobby here because they got Federal funds, even with non-Federal funds. OK. That makes sense. Now, I voted against that, because I felt that that was really infringing their free speech. What my amendment does today is say, ``Okay, guys, I lost. If we are going to do that to nonprofits, then we certainly ought to be doing it to profits.'' My amendment says what is good for the goose is good for the gander, or what is good for a nonprofit ought to be able to be good for a profit. What this amendment says is that companies that receive high amounts of money for defense contracts and Government contracts that are in for-profit businesses also cannot use their non-Government money to lobby. Now, let us be real serious about this here.…”