WASHINGTON In a gut punch to restaurants here, the U.S. Senate has adopted a new code of ethics that forbids members from accepting free meals from lobbyists or their firms. The U.S. House of representatives had adopted an identical provision earlier in the current Congressional session.
The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington estimated last year that as many as 30 percent of fine-dining sales in the nation’s capital are generated by meals for lawmakers.
The measure could also affect restaurants in U.S. senators and representatives’ home states, since the legislators would be prohibited from accepting free meals there, too.
The Senate’s new behavioral rules will also snatch back the business that restaurants enjoyed when one of the political parties’ national conventions came to town. The new measure bars lobbyists from throwing parties for the lawmakers during the conventions. During the Republican Party’s 2004 gathering in New York, for instance, restaurants did a brisk trade in hosting dinners and cocktail parties thrown for attendees by lobbying groups, including the National Restaurant Association.
The two chambers of the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to adopt the new rules of conduct in the wake of lobbying scandals that many assert was a major factor in the Republican’s loss of Capitol Hill in the November elections.
