Pelosi announces plans to regulate grassroots lobbying

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Written by ShadowMonkey

Monday, 18 December 2006

In what is apparently the incoming House Democratic leadership's first major attack on the rights of citizens, House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has announced that she intends to introduce legislation that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations.

The legislation would reportedly change the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

What if you blog? Are you a 'grassroots organization?' I know a lot of us out there reach way more than 500 members of the general public, and many take it upon themselves to suggest contact with members of Congress and other officials. What the hell is Pelosi doing here?

The Virginia-based Free Speech Coalition, in a letter signed by 47 grassroots leaders (PDF), told the group Public Citizen, which is helping Rep. Pelosi draft the legislation, that the grassroots reporting and penalty provisions being crafted would violate the First Amendment rights of small citizen action groups, yet create loopholes for big corporations, unions, trade associations and membership special interests such as Public Citizen itself.

A couple of responses from around the net:

This is a bit disturbing. I have said before that I would like to see something done about the lies told by some grassroots organizations on both sides. I also said I didn't see a way to do it without stepping on the first ammendment, so we are probably stuck with what we got. This legislation looks exactly like what I was afraid of.
souce: Lockergnome

This really pisses me off to speak bluntly. The average voter has almost no say nor the time to follow all the issues, so we rely on many grassroots groups to keep us informed and remind us when major issues are hitting the floor. I'm sorry, but it's none of the House's business how we are meeting and who we are contacting.
source: freerepublic.com

First Amendment lawyer and Co-Counsel for the Free Speech Coalition, William J. Olson, said, "The Public Citizen/Pelosi bill would allow corporations, unions and even foreign interests to spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars mobilizing their shareholders, officers, employees and members, yet hide those expenditures. On the flipside, their bill would require real citizen associations to essentially obtain Congress's consent to communicate about important policy matters that impact on them. It's not just the imbalance that is wrong; it's a frontal attack on the First Amendment and political speech."

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