Since the presidential race has turned into an episode of MTV Cribs - next up, web ads with seizure inducing editing of million dollar homes - I figured that it would be worth while to look at the personal financial disclosures of John McCain and Barack Obama to see what information we can find on their houses.

Oh wait, what’s that? Personal financial disclosure rules don’t require the listing of residential properties. That’s why no one knew about Chris Dodd’s favorable mortgage from Countrywide or Rep. Laura Richardson’s two foreclosures.

Looking at Obama and McCain’s form I can see that some of McCains eight to eleven residential properties are listed under Cindy McCain’s name while Obama’s home is not listed. Here are some of the ones listed on the McCain financial disclosure:

Residential Real Estate Held for Investment, Coronado, CA - Over $1 million

Sedona Property, Cornville, AZ (Two Parcels. Parcel 1: Residence and Guest House. Parcel 2: Guest House.) - Over $1 million

Those are only two residential property listings that appear in both candidates financial disclosures. There are few proposals flying around Congress to require home disclosure on personal financial disclosures. Perhaps they should address this.

On another personal financial disclosure related topic, I noticed the Mark Nicholas used our Fortune 535 site to compare the net worth of Barack Obama and John McCain. Unfortunately, the site uses as its most recent filing, the 2007 report, which represents the year 2006. This was prior to the huge profits made by Obama through royalties from his latest book. So, if you want to get the most recent average net worth, you’d have to look at his 2008 report (covering 2007), in which he reports well over a million in assets.

John McCain is another story. McCain is the only member of Congress who still checks a box that lists asset value at “Over $1 million”. He does this under an exemption rule allowing the filer to not identify the actual range, over $1 million, if the asset is held by a spouse or dependent child. I should reiterate that McCain is the only member of Congress who claims this exemption and fills out the “Over $1 million” box for many assets. John Kerry, Dianne Feinstein, Jane Harman, and Nancy Pelosi all list the highest accurate value range for their spouse’s large holdings; John McCain does not. Considering this, John McCain, when combined with the actual value of Cindy McCain’s holdings, is worth much more than the amount we extracted from his personal financial disclosures for Fortune 535.

Bottom line: Obama worth more than listed and McCain worth way more.

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Three makes a trend, right? Today, there are three news stories on presidential bundlers - campaign contributors who solicit money from other contributors and bundle it together - and their activities. All of these stories highlight the need for bundling disclosure rules from the Federal Election Commission. But two of these stories pinpoint the potential for abuse in the bundling system.

The Washington Post looks at the odd practices of one Harry Sargent III, the owner of an oil trading company with billion dollar defense contracts. Sargent has raised over $50,000 for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid from a collection of Arab-Americans who refuse to discuss why they gave money to the Republican’s campaign: (more…)

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Larry Lessig blogs today about why he’s supporting Barack Obama for President. There are a number of reasons, including this one:

… a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn’t just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress’s calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

 Here’s a link to the entire policy statement by Obama, and another report.

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The Reason Foundation has been getting the presidential candidates to talk more about transparency on the campaign trail by asking them to sign a pledge to run a transparent administration and fully enforce the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, also known as Coburn-Obama. The FFATA requires the Office of Management and Budget to disclose all federal funding contracts, grants, and earmarks in a searchable database. The Sunlight Foundation was a part of a coalition of groups that worked to pass the bill, in particular working to out the Senator with a secret hold on the bill. So far, three candidates - Barack Obama, Ron Paul, and Sam Brownback - have signed the pledge. It’s great to see transparency taking a hold as an issue in the 2008 presidential election. Hopefully, we’ll hear from more candidates on the issue soon. For now, check out below for the statements made by the three pledge signees.

Sen. Barack Obama: "Every American has the right to know how the government spends their tax dollars, but for too long that information has been largely hidden from public view. This historic law will lift the veil of secrecy in Washington and ensure that our government is transparent and accountable to the American people. And I will be proud to fully implement and enforce this law as president."

Rep. Ron Paul: "Signing the Oath of Presidential Transparency was a no brainer for me. I will aggressively pursue full openness and accountability within my administration if elected president."

Sen. Sam Brownback: "Americans need to feel they can trust their government. As president I will continue my record of supporting policies that increase government transparency and boost confidence in our democratic system."

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Two months ago, Sen. Barack Obama laid out his plan to make the executive branch more transparent and accountable to the American people. Ellen wrote a blog post then which both acknowledged the importance of a major Presidential candidate putting transparency on the agenda and pushed for an even more active transparency agenda. Yesterday in Iowa, Sen. Obama reiterated his transparency agenda while adding a bit more to it.

The biggest new announcement in Obama’s agenda is that, as President, he would post all lobbyist meetings with government agencies online. There is no word on how this would be done - on each individual agency site or through a master database. Posting lobbyist meetings with government agencies would mark a huge shift in the way citizens are able to view the operations of their government and would create incentives to reduce the special access governance system that we currently operate (see Larry Lessig for more on this). Hopefully, this plan would apply to the White House and not just the agencies overseen by Cabinet officials.

The rest of Obama’s plan remains similar to what Ellen wrote about in June - posting bills online for five days before signing them and online townhall chats with agency heads - and the criticisms still remain. The only thing that I have to say about Obama’s plan to post all lobbyist meetings with agency heads is that he could set an example by posting his schedule now and reveal all lobbyist meetings that he is having now as a Senator. If it’s good enough for the executive branch, it’s good enough for the legislative as well. And if it’s good enough for the future, it’s good enough for the present.

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From TechPresident this morning…

Following in the footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore, Barack Obama has posed a question on Yahoo! Answers, reports the Chicago Tribune. His question? "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" . . . The Tribune notes that Obama isn't the first candidate to use the forum; Hillary Clinton and John McCain have been there, done that.

Why aren't members of Congress doing this? And if they are, let me know.

As of this writing there have been more than 12,000 responses to Obama's questions. They are quite revealing:

"I think we need to give people a personal stake in the process. I think most of us feel that we have little to no power. We all need to feel that we are important and that our opinions matter."

"Ban Ads, make people research candidates. A computer can be used for more than spreading hate and division on yahoo . . .

"Restore their faith in Congress by providing concise information about the workings of the legislature. The past 6 years of inaction and obstruction were horrible, but Congresses' reputation is being further eroded as it begins to expose Executive branch wrongdoing. Every provision in a bill that benefits a particular legislator or district seems to be called an "earmark" or "pork." Congressmen and Senators are being portrayed as craven creatures who trade votes on nationally important issues for this pork, and who "fish" and "grandstand" for purely selfish political motives.

All of this seems to feed cyncism and citizen apathy. I think we need to know something positive and informative about the work of Congress. For example, What is proper role of pork? and, How is the executive branch being investigated in a way that will have a positive impact for our country?"

"On YouTube for the first time last week, a presidential candidate responded to a video when Dennis Kucinich responded to some statements someone else had made about him. This could be an incredible way to have a dialogue with people……allow people to record questions to you via YouTube, and then respond with a publicly accessible video for all to see. Voters will know where you stand, candidates will take positions, and all videos are easily accessible by all! I'd highly recommend beginning this, Mr. Obama, it would set you apart as a trendsetter, would show that you're above the old type of politics, and allow you to really interact with your grass-roots supporters, who are the bread and butter of your campaign (at least we like to think).

"People want things easy to access…like information. Yet with the vast amount of media & resources, it is hard to determine who stands for what. I don't have a whole lot of time to read through candidate web sites, and I don't always make it home on time for the 6 o'clock news beat on candidates. I just want to know who stands for what, what their plans are and how it will benefit me and my family. If you can make it simple yet informational then I am sure more people would be more inclined to be involved.

 

 

 

 

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Yesterday during the debate on the Senate ethics legislation Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Co.), along with cosponsor Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), introduced an amendment to require that each Senate committee and subcommittee post to their website “a video recording, audio recording, or transcript of any meeting not later than 14 business days after the meeting occurs.” Salazar’s amendment (SA 15), which modifies Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) substitute amendment SA 3, was agreed to by a voice vote yesterday.

Since only 49% of committee and subcommittee meetings in the 109^th Congress were placed on their respective committee websites the above mentioned formats this amendment would go a long way to expanding public access to the committee process. Here’s a bit of what Salazar said on the floor yesterday when he introduced his amendment:

While Senate rules require that committee meetings be open to the public and that each committee prepare and keep a complete transcript or electronic recording of all of its meetings, it still remains very difficult for citizens to figure out what actually goes on in our committee rooms. According to one estimate, a transcript or electronic recording is available online for only about one-half of all Senate committee and subcommittee hearings. Only for one-half of those hearings is there made available a transcript that the public can actually access. That number is far too low. There is no reason why, in this day of modern technology and communications, we should not be able to achieve a goal of 100 percent.

I know we often refer to Justice Brandeis because he was one of those great jurists who really illuminated our times with some of his wisdom, his jewels that have become almost cliches that captured the moment. I remember Justice Brandeis's famous line where he said, “Sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

He almost got the Brandeis quote right; it’s a catchy phrase nonetheless. Soon all the politicians will be saying it.

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The House and Senate have agreed on a version of S. 2590, the Coburn-Obama database bill. The press release indicates that the publicly available database that the legislation will create will include both federal contracts and grants (an earlier House bill, Blunt-Davis, would have disclosed grants but not contracts). The bill still has to pass the House, but it looks like it’s moving forward. Here’s the release:

WASHINGTON—House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), U.S. Senators Tom Coburn (Okla.), Barack Obama (Ill.), and Tom Carper (Del.), and Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (Va.) today announced that they have reached agreement on legislation to increase accountability and transparency by establishing a public database to track federal grants and contracts.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) announced he plans to schedule the agreed-upon language for House floor consideration next week.

“This process has focused on enhancing the accountability and transparency in the federal budget process,” Blunt, Boehner, and Davis said. “The federal government awards approximately $300 billion in grants to roughly 30,000 different organizations. Each year, roughly one million contracts exceed the $25,000 reporting threshold. We need to be sure that money is spent wisely. Our legislation creates a transparent system for reviewing these expenditures so that Congress, the press, and the American public have the information they need to conduct proper oversight of the use of our tax dollars. The package we’ve agreed to move requires the Administration to establish searchable databases for both grants and contracts.”

“I’m pleased that the House leadership agreed with us that all federal spending should be accessible through this website. It doesn’t matter if it’s a grant, an earmark, or a contract, this legislation will allow the public to know how their tax dollars are being spent,” said Sen. Obama

“This bill is a small but significant step toward changing the culture in Washington. Only by fostering a culture of openness, transparency and accountability will Congress come together to address the mounting fiscal challenges that threaten our future prosperity. The group that deserves credit for passing this bill, however, is not Congress, but the army of bloggers and concerned citizens who told Congress that transparency is a just demand for all citizens, not a special privilege for political insiders. Their remarkable effort demonstrates that our system of government does work when the people take the reins of government and demand change,” Dr. Coburn said.

“I’m pleased that we’ve been able to work out an agreement to let this important legislation move to a vote in the House,” said Sen. Carper. “If we’re going to hold the federal government accountable for its performance, then we need to empower the public with basic information about who’s receiving federal dollars and what’s being done with them. This bill will shed some much-needed light on the activities of most federal agencies, allowing the public to decide for themselves whether their tax dollars are well spent.”

On June 21, the House unanimously passed HR 5060, the Blunt-Davis grants database bill. The Senate unanimously passed S 2590, the Coburn-Obama grants and contracts database bill, yesterday.

We may well get to see the receipts from the government’s shopping sprees — just as the Founders intended. This from a post by Larry Kudlow at the Corner:

“We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them.” -Thomas Jefferson

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Sunlight’s been an active analyst on what turns out to be Sen. Ted Stevens’ hold on the Coburn-Obama bill and how the lack of transparency of this peculiar Senate process is a huge disservice to our democracy, even though it has long been a hallmark of how the Senate does its business. It’s time has come and now, thanks to citizens’ response to the blogosphere’s rallying calls to find out who was at the bottom of  the hold, gone. (OK. That’s too optimistic, but I bet that the next time a high profile piece of legislation is moving, a Senator will think twice about putting a secret "hold" on it.)

But Sen. Stevens has a point. Surely we should know precisely the cost of such an endeavor. It turns out that, according to the Congressional Budget office, implementing the on-line search database might cost $9 million in the first 2 years and $2 million each year thereafter — about $15 million over the 2007-2011 period. Now it’s up to the public to decide whether it’s worth having the information about how the government spends their money available for that cost. It seems to me that if some dubious contracts are exposed — and eliminated — that the cost benefit ratio is pretty good.

But wait a minute! One of the very first grants that the Sunlight Foundation made was to create an online searchable database of government grants and contracts that is nearly identical in terms of functionality to the one that would be mandated by the Coburn-Obama bill. We made a 3-year grant to the nonprofit organization OMB Watch for a total of — hold your breath — $234,713!  

 I spoke with Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, last night to figure out whether what OMB Watch is developing is substantially different than the $15 million database proposed by Coburn-Obama bill. In his characteristic fashion, he responded: "Nope."

Uh….if the nonprofit sector can do the work for less than $250,000, and that includes getting up the initial database (that goes back to 2000, which the bill doesn’t require) in less than 6 months, surely the government could do it faster . While the OMB Watch service is vitally important, particuarly in the absence of a government database, the government should be able to do a much better job, providing improved public access. Bottom line: This kind of information about government spending should be done by the government — not nonprofit watchdogs. And the government does not need to wait for legislation to accomplish the mandate in the Coburn-Obama bill. 

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The Washington Post writes a profile of anti-pork Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) crusade to cut earmarks out of the emergency spending supplemental before the Senate. Only one of his amendments were ultimately successful and the lack of majority support from either party led him to withdraw many of his amendments challenging the earmarks. One of his challenges was to a $500 million earmark to aid rebuilding of a Northrop Grumman shipbuilding yard in Mississippi. The Wall Street Journal reports that the vote was 51-47 with both parties evenly dividing. One of the few successul amendments aimed at controlling spending was introduced by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and co-sponsord by Coburn. The amendment restricts the number of no-bid contracts for rebuilding in the Gulf Coast and was agreed to with a 98-0 vote.

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