Political Quotes

“so we understand what happened, the Senate passed an ethics reform bill. It is a big bill. There are a lot of provisions in the bill that we felt were necessary because of some of the wrongdoing that occurred in Washington over the last several years. We went after the Jack Abramoff scandal. Remember that lobbyist? He is in prison. He had a pretty sweetheart arrangement here. He was sticking things in bills. It went on and on. I will not go into all the gruesome details, but we decided to break this kind of cozy relationship between lobbyists and some Members on Capitol Hill. And then we started to take a look at some of the other aspects of things that were troubling people. We went into the question of gifts, how much can a Senator receive. We went into the question of leaving the Senate and picking up a big-paying job as a lobbyist, within a few months making a lot of money. That has happened too often. We said, let's slow down this revolving door. We went after the disclosure of private employment negotiations that Senators and Congressmen were entering into while they were still sitting in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. We expanded lobby disclosure requirements. We went to great lengths and said lobbyists have to tell us a lot more about what they are doing with their money and time. Then we went into prohibiting the old K Street Project.”