Some senators and advocacy groups are complaining that the freshly passed Senate bill to reduce the influence of lobbyists on Congress is too weak to be effective. The issues may need to be taken up again as new abuses are revealed, but the bill, if properly carried out, would be powerful in a new sense for Washington: average citizens would be able to see for themselves how lobbyists gain access to politicians.

This is both revelatory and mundane. The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, written by Sens. Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman, requires Internet reporting for lobbying activities, changing the nature of the old-style long and tedious paper trail into a series of links that anyone who can turn on a computer should be able to follow. The act requires Internet reporting on earmarks and on gifts, meals and travel and lodging, with these latter reports required on the members’ Web sites. There are also extensive new electronic disclosure requirements for lobbyists themselves.

Whether this is “very, very weak,” as Sen. John McCain commented in voting against the bill (it passed 90-8), will be determined by the interest level in the public. If there is interest, related Web sites will swiftly use the information to post aggregated scores for which members of Congress accept the most gifts and lunches, where they are traveling on someone else’s dime and what earmarks showed up in legislation after which lunch with a lobbyist.

A lot of this information is available now but it’s not nearly as easy to access as it should be. If this information becomes easy to find, it will be the unusual senator who doesn’t think twice about their activities showing up on their Web sites.

The mundane part of this, on the heels of the sentencing of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is the reform is in part about dinner, free golf and travel. No one wants to believe elected officials would be swayed by these, and yet lobbyists don’t continue to offer these perks because they fail to work.

The nation, however, won’t learn whether this reform is strong or weak unless the House passes a version as well and is willing to reconcile it to something close to what the Senate has produced. According to news reports, House debate on the issue could begin next week, but already some House members are saying the reforms are an overreaction to Mr. Abramoff and former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., who accepted expensive antiques, a yacht and other perks from defense contractors in exchange for earmarks. But even if these cases had not existed, the need for transparency at a time when transparency is easily possible through the Internet is apparent.

Lobbying reform in 2006 could look like a victory for the public if the House does as well as the Senate.