When is a Lobbyist-financed Junket not a Junket?

When, as Brian Beutler points out, the junket is organized by a 501(c) 3 organization affiliated with a lobbying organization rather than by the lobbyists as such. As Beutler notes, the major beneficiaries of this loophole are the Aspen Institute, which I think legitimately isn't a lobbying group, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which, self-describing as "America's pro-Israel Lobby," clearly is a lobbying outfit.

My assumption, though, is that AIPAC won't be alone among major lobbying groups for long, and that lots of trade associations are going to be developing a newfound interest in establishing not-for-profit "educational" institutions in the near future.

Comments

Imagine an educational institution whose entire coursework is a single sentence: Kill all the Muslims.

They could train parrots to be their professors.

Pretty low overhead, actually.

Posted by alphie | January 9, 2007 4:53 PM

Looks like easy work to me. Where're they hiring?

Posted by Jackmormon | January 9, 2007 5:33 PM

Actually, a lot of organizations have a dual non-profit/lobbying structure. The Arab American Institute does, as does Amnesty International (I think). The American Friends Service Committee does as well. I'm sure there are a ton more. Of course, most of these started out as non profit organizations that then branched out into lobbying, rather than the other way around.

Posted by Rashad | January 9, 2007 5:36 PM

Rashad is right. You'll have one overtly political group (for instance, the League of Conservation Voters), to which contributions aren't tax deductible, and then you'll have its sister educational org (the LCV Education Fund, which is listed in the pages of the Combined Federal Campaign).

The proper thing would be to forbid Congresspersons to receive gifts of travel and entertainment from anyone, and only gifts of relatively trivial and unambiguous value from their actual family and friends and so forth.

Posted by RT | January 9, 2007 5:57 PM

The problem here is that, while travel is seen as a "gift", it is also critical to Congress' functioning. For instance, Member staffers (as opposed to Committee staffers), that is your local Congressman's staff member, can't go on trips funded by taxpayer dollars. Yet, staffers are expected to be able to write and respond to foreign policy legislation.

As a Congressional staffer, I've found my privately-funded trips to places like Indonesia and Egypt to be very valuable in helping my boss on the House International Relations Committee because they were fact-finding missions full of meetings and work, not golfing.

The loophole in the law is a major loophole and that's intentional. To prohibit all travel would majorly impact Congress' ability to be knowledgeable on foreign policy.

Posted by Judah | January 10, 2007 12:34 AM