With the Democratic National Convention coming to Denver this year, I had wondered whether the new rules that the Democrats put in place last year would really slow down the partying that always goes on at these events. After all, the Democratic leadership had made the rule changes they passed a centerpiece of their vow to change the way Congress does business. We all know that the earmark changes amounted to next to nothing. But we could still have hopes for the other changes, couldn't we?
Well, it turns out not. According to the Dec 13th edition of The Hill newspaper, the House ethics committee issued their "guidelines" on parties at National Conventions on Dec 10th. The good news in them was that they banned lobbyists or organizations employing lobbyists from underwriting parties that honor a member or members of Congress by name. You see, it was common practice at National Conventions to curry favor with members by paying for some lavish party to honor "Representative Big Shot" in his name.
The bad news though is they OK'ed "an event that is organized to honor a delegation or caucus, without naming any specific Member of the delegtion or caucus". That means that a corporation could still put on an event for "the Colorado Delegation" as long as they did not name any of the members. So the Party will still go on as lavish as ever, you just won't have individual parties like happened in the past.
Does that really change much? Not at all. The members will still see hosted by "ABC Corporation" and know who is trying to curry favor. So we now have just one more piece of cosmetic reform that will make sure the money continues to flow!
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