The American Bar Association this week urged Congress to enact tighter controls on lobbying.

On Aug. 9, the group's House of Delegates approved a resolution advocating several material changes to the Lobbying Disclosure Act that would require greater disclosure and prevent people from lobbying lawmakers for whom they have recently raised money, according to Roll Call.

A Wall Street Journal blog post noted that the move is especially significant because many of the group's members are registered lobbyists. This "could mean more disclosure of the activities of public affairs specialists, strategists, pollsters and people who gin up grassroots support for legislation outside of Washington," the Journal added.

The association wants Congress to require that quarterly reports identify "individuals principally involved in planning, directing or coordinating lobbying support activities," according to resolution language posted on the ABA's website last month. The resolution is based on a January report by a special lobbying reform task force, according to Roll Call.

The group also wants to expand the definition of who may be considered a lobbyist. (Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act's current terms, it points out, an organization need only register if it employs someone who spends 20 percent or more of his or her time lobbying for a particular client in a given quarter.) The group asks Congress to establish new "reasonable threshold limitations."

The ABA also seeks to "provide that a federally registered lobbyist may not ... lobby a member of Congress for whom he or she has engaged in campaign fundraising during the past two years."

The American League of Lobbyists supports the bulk of the recommendations, according to Roll Call.

"We both recognize that there are two significant problems," ALL President Howard Marlowe told Roll Call. "One is the people who are doing the lobbying who are not registered and are therefore not reporting. The second is the significant influence of money in the policymaking process."

Where the groups differ, though, is over the specific campaign finance language, the newspaper noted.

Marlowe told the paper the ABA knows "that they're on the short end of the stick constitutionally when they're doing that, and it's not likely to pass muster."