Citizen Direct asked Congress Watch staff to share with you some of their successes this year:
Frank Clemente, Director: To keep the public and the media informed, we launched Lobbyinginfo.org
which keeps track of lobbyists and we studied and published crucial
information about the revolving door in and out of Congress.
Gordon Clark, Field Director: we have so many successes I can't decide, how about the following:
getting
Congress to revoke "the DeLay rule" (the one that would have allowed
him to stay as Majority leader even if indicted), as well as forcing
the Republicans to revoke the other ethics rule changes they pushed
through in an attempt to protect DeLay and other members of Congress
raising
enough hell about DeLay to be causing a lot of his Republican
colleagues, who are also now looking at his indictment, to consider
finding a new majority leader
beating
back multiple attempts to undermine campaign finance reform: two of the
highlights included destroying the proposed Pence-Wynn bill before it
ever got out of the blocks (this bill would have made numerous
draconian changes in campaign finance law, even repealing rules that
have been in force since the Watergate scandal); and second, forcing
Sens. Frist and McConnell to withdraw a secret provision to change the
rules on use of money from members' "Leadership PACs," in essence
creating a slush fund in which members of Congress could transmit
unlimited (and unregulated) amounts of money from PACs created for
office and travel expenses to national party committees, then be
funneled back to their reelection campaigns.
raising
enough hell through the public to force Frist to withdraw his plan to
permanently end the inheritance tax in September, and to force the Bush
Administration to drop any plans for the same this year
pushing many major Democrats, and even a few Republicans, in Congress to create lobbying reform legislation.
Director of Congress Watch Frank Clemente
Congress
Watch champions consumer interests before the U.S. Congress and serves
as a government watchdog. We lobby to strengthen health, safety and
environment protections; demand an end to corporate subsidies; fight to
preserve citizen access to the courts to redress corporate wrongdoing;
and seek to ensure a strong democracy by exposing the harmful impact of
money in politics and advocating for comprehensive campaign finance
reform.
Jessica Kutch, Web Organizer:
Connecticut's new clean elections law! It's the most progressive clean
elections law in the country. And Connecticut is my home state, I'm
proud.
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