Dec 1, 2007 -- CQ: Donation Bundlers Face FEC Reckoning
By: Shawn Zeller

Bundled campaign donations are now the premier come-on for lobbyists hoping to get the attention of legislators, given the post-Abramoff strictures imposed this summer on lobbyist-financed meals, gifts and travel. But bundled donations are also coming in for fresh scrutiny. Last week the Federal Election Commission ended the public comment period on its proposed new standards for reporting the activity, in which a K Street player puts together a package of donations from a group of individuals and then delivers it to a campaign.

The lobbying law enacted this year requires candidates to disclose information about any lobbyist who raises more than $15,000 for them from friends and colleagues during any six-month period. Defining when those six-month periods should begin or end is among the tasks still on the FEC's to-do list.

Advocates of stricter campaign finance oversight have weighed in, not surprisingly, in behalf of the toughest possible disclosure requirements. "Any close calls that come up should be resolved in favor of the broadest disclosure possible," says Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington advocacy group. "That is our guiding mantra."

The two main items for the FEC to regulate, as Ryan sees it, are the detail of the disclosure by lobbyist-fundraisers and the still-unsettled official definition of who counts as a lobbyist. The Campaign Legal Center wants to require campaigns to report the names of all employees of organizations that lobby, whether or not they themselves are registered with the House and Senate as lobbyists, together with their bundled donation totals.

Some watchdog groups are also pressing the commission to extend the new rules beyond the lobbying world and apply them to anyone who bundles donations for a campaign. A technicality currently permits most campaigns to skirt disclosure requirements — leaving campaign watchdogs in the awkward spot of hitting up campaigns for voluntary data dumps. And most candidates "won't tell us anything," says Craig Holman of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.