The Washington Post reported yesterday on new lobbyist regulations being proposed by the American League of Lobbyists. According to the report, ALL recommends eliminating the 20 percent loophole for lobbyists for hire. That would mean powerful stealth lobbyists like Tom Daschle, Newt Gingrich and Jon Corzine would have to register. ALL’s proposal would reduce the size of the loophole for in-house lobbyists, but just barely. It would allow lobbyists who work in-house to fly under the radar by claiming they spent less than 15 percent of their time lobbying. Sunlight has been advocating closing the 20 percent loophole for all lobbyists since before it was cool.

Sunlight’s position is simple. If you lobby, and you are paid to lobby, you should register to lobby. Twenty percent, fifteen percent, in house or not, it makes no difference.

Any carve out will be exploited, giving power players a way to hide their activities. Take Chris Dodd. The head of the Motion Picture Association of America is a former powerful senator who undoubtedly has the private numbers of many current members of Congress programmed into his cell phone. He’s not registered now, and there is no reason to think he would register simply because the threshold was lowered from 20 to 15 percent. Yet he has far more access and far more power than I, an outside lobbyist consultant to Sunlight, or the vast majority of lobbyists-for-hire could hope to have. Why give him a pass?

ALL is not the only group with a proposal to reform lobbying. The American Bar Association has a set of recommendations (that includes eliminating the 20 percent loophole, among other things), as of course, does Sunlight. Lobbying reform legislation has been introduced in Congress, and the President continues to talk about the issue. With all of the suggestions, ideas and competing (and overlapping) proposals, the time is ripe for Congress to take the issue of lobbying reform seriously. A start would be to hold hearings so that advocates could fully explain their positions and members of Congress could start to build a record and build a consensus for meaningful reform.

Here’s a riddle: What do you call it when someone earns millions of dollars from corporate clients, uses his relationships with the most influential officials in government to pursue those clients’ interests, and even has offices on K Street?

Answer: If you are Newt Gingrich, not a lobbyist.

The Washington Post reports that corporate clients paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the current leader in the Republican primary in exchange for him providing “access to top transformational leadership across industry and government” through his for-profit “think tank.” Apparently they got what they paid for. According to the Post, “Gingrich also bragged about his success in pushing conservative policies and legislation in Washington during his political exile.”

We’ve written many times before about stealth lobbyists, often former Members of Congress who crawl around Capitol Hill and the White House advocating on behalf of fat cat clients, but who skirt disclosure under the lobby laws by claiming they only provide “strategic advice” or spend less than 20% of their time lobbying.

And we’ve advocated—dare I say lobbied—to change all of that.

The specter of Newt Gingrich, former non-lobbyist lobbyist, occupying the White House should galvanize calls for lobbying reform. It’s problematic enough when a former Member of Congress provides his clients with access to his friends and colleagues in the House or the Senate. But if Washington’s revolving door should swing that person into the White House, corporate interests who once paid handsomely for strategic advice will have a direct line to the leader of the country.

The Gingrich example is at the top of the list of why we need a new approach to lobbying disclosure. The most influential people in Washington can easily skirt the rules currently in place. Everyone who is not in that top tier of influence peddlers—including all of the registered lobbyists who follow the rules—should recognize the failure of the current system and work to change it by ensuring that if someone is paid to lobby, they register and report as a lobbyist.