The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky points out a possible House ethics violation by Rep. Hilda Solis (D., Calif.), President Obama’s nominee for Labor Secretary. Beginning in 2007, Solis served as the treasurer and as a board member for the group American Rights at Work, which paid approximately $230,000 to lobby her and other members of Congress on a number of bills, including organized labor’s holy grail, the Employee Free Choice Act. Von Spakovsky writes that Solis’s treasurer position is not a passive role, but required her active participation in directing the funds used to lobby Congress. ARAW’s by-laws describe the treasurer position thus:

The Treasure[r] shall ensure that there is a full and accurate account of receipts and disbursements of the corporation, and shall render to the President and the board, upon request, an accounting of all the transactions and of the financial condition of the corporation.

In other words, as Spakovsky puts it, “Solis was specifically charged with reporting all of the funds spent by ARAW to lobby Congress.” Aside from the possible ethics breach, any work Solis does on the Employee Free Choice Act would probably clash with President Obama’s promises on lobbyists in his administration. He said they would have to recuse themselves from matters on which they worked before entering government.

Here is another part of the story. ARAW has done more in the last two years than simply lobby Congress on the Employee Free Choice Act. It has also spent $1.7 million in soft money against Republican Senators. They filed 20 FEC reports (Form 9) last year on the issue ads they ran against John Sununu (N.H.), Susan Collins (Maine), Norm Coleman (Minn.), Gordon Smith (Ore.) and Ted Stevens (Alaska). Here is the Maine version of the ad, which urged Mainers to contact Collins and tell her to “stop siding with wealthy CEOs over working families.”

What is ARAW’s primary purpose? Last year, they spent nearly $2 million lobbying Congress and electioneering with soft money. The group’s budget for 2007, the most recent available from its IRS filings, was $2.67 million.

501 c (4) groups like ARAW are permitted to spend soft money under an exception to McCain-Feingold’s ban on soft money, but involvement by members of Congress can be tricky. Federal officeholders and candidates cannot solicit, direct or transfer soft-money funds that are used in federal elections. (The idea here is that they could otherwise use such funds to circumvent campaign finance laws.)

By her own account, Solis no longer served as ARAW’s treasurer (an unpaid position) when the political expenditures were made in the late summer and fall of 2008. She is still the only sitting member of Congress listed as an officer on the group’s most recent 990 form.