Political activities of private recipients of federal grants or contracts / Jack Maskell, Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.

Format:

Book

Government document

Author/Creator:

Maskell, Jack, author.

Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, author.

Contributor:

Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, author.

Series:

CRS report for Congress ; RL34725.

CRS report for Congress ; RL34725

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lobbying.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (33 pages).

Place of Publication:

Washington, District of Columbia : Congressional Research Service, 2010.

Summary:

The restrictions on lobbying with federal funds generally follow only the funds themselves, restricting the use of such funds, and do not require a private recipient to forgo the exercise of First Amendment advocacy activities with one's own, private resources in return for or as a condition to the receipt of federal grant or contract funds.1. [...] While the provision might bar the use of federal funds to lobby a Member of Congress to intervene with an agency concerning the making, extension, or modification of a grant, loan, contract or agreement, or might bar the lobbying of Congress concerning a direct, earmarked appropriation, or a specific program or spending instruction in a congressional report, the Byrd Amendment would not appear to [...] The Comptroller General found that this newsletter, to the extent it involved UMTA grant funds, violated the anti-lobbying statute.16 In the later appropriations riders of this nature, the language of the provision was changed to now expressly include "by private contractor" in the restriction on the use of federal appropriations: No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act sha [...] As to the use of funds by grantees of federal agencies when such use is restricted by an appropriation rider, the Comptroller General has interpreted the restriction on grantees in the HHS appropriations legislation, for example, and found it to have been violated "when a local community action agency used grant funds for a mass mailing of a letter to members of the public urging them to write the [...] The 2002 amendments, while eliminating the criminal penalties and substituting the civil penalties of the so-called "Byrd Amendment,"27 substantially broadened the substantive prohibition to cover the use of federal appropriations to lobby or influence all levels of governmental authority,28 and removed the penalties provision which had indicated an applicability only to federal officers and emplo.

Notes:

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