Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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The dysfunctional way we view campaign contributions and corruption
I ham-handedly tried to explain why Tom DeLay got off-the-hook yesterday when I stated that his ideology overlapped perfectly with the corrupt actions of former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. What I meant is that it was impossible to distinguish whether DeLay’s positions, for example, on labor laws for the Marianas Islands, were influenced by the trips and dining he was provided by Abramoff–via money laundered through a nonprofit–or whether that position stemmed from his conservative belief in free markets with little to no regulation. Prosecutors couldn’t figure it out and there was no evidence to go by except for DeLay’s statement that he was simply following his ideological beliefs. The money spent on him held no sway over his ultimate decisions, he argued.
A similar argument can be made for lawmakers who receive campaign contributions from lobbyists and employees of firms who receive earmarks from said lawmakers. Take deceased Rep. John Murtha as an example. Murtha could repeatedly state that all that concerned him was getting jobs and infrastructure into his economically depressed district. Same goes for Rep. Don Young, former Sen. Ted Stevens and former Sen. Robert Byrd. All the campaign contributions they were getting didn’t matter when they signed off on earmarks for their contributors because they were just looking for viable job-creating projects. You can’t necessarily prove that anything illegal happened.
All of that brings us to the Op-Ed by author and lawyer Scott Turow in today’s New York Times. Turow does the best job possible explaining the dysfunctional ways in which our legal system views and deals with campaign contributions. One person can be convicted of bribery for offering a $1,000 contribution in exchange for a vote while Rod Blagojevich walks free on a hung jury over charges that he held up funding for a children’s hospital over campaign contributions and so on and so on.
Our legal system accepts that the transmission of campaign contributions in exchange for official acts is illegal bribery, yet it fails to properly police this practice. This is mainly due to the circumstances described above. How do you prove that a contribution was intended as a bribe when the action may have taken place despite the contribution? It’s impossible. So you get a system where we scold people for the appearance of corruption or improper influence, but don’t do anything about it. Take this example that Turow lays out:
For example, in June 2009, the court decided a case involving Massey Coal and its chief executive, Joe Blankenship. (Coincidentally, Massey was the operator of a coal mine in West Virginia that exploded in April, killing 29 miners.) In 2004, after Massey had lost a $50-million fraud verdict to a rival coal company, Mr. Blankenship spent $3 million supporting the successful candidacy of Brent Benjamin to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, where Massey’s challenge of the fraud verdict was going to be heard.
Although Mr. Blankenship’s spending eclipsed the contributions of all of Judge Benjamin’s other donors put together, the judge subsequently refused to remove himself from Massey’s appeal. Unsurprisingly, the court voted to overturn the verdict against Massey, with Judge Benjamin providing the deciding vote.
The case eventually came to the United States Supreme Court, which by a 5-to-4 vote decided Justice Benjamin should have recused himself because of the “disproportionate” influence Mr. Blankenship’s money had in the election. Nonetheless, the court pointedly refused to require the same from other judges who received less grandiose campaign assistance from lawyers and litigants with cases before them.
Moreover, the court appeared persuaded that nothing criminal had occurred, even though its ruling concluded that it was “reasonably foreseeable” at the time that Mr. Benjamin would decide the Massey case and that Mr. Blankenship had a “vested interest” when he spent the money. Given that logic, who can blame Mr. Blagojevich — or Wanda Brandstetter — for asking, “Why me?”
The court ruled that the judge was corrupted, but that no law had been broken. This is the sort of dysfunctional world of campaign funding that we live in.
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On the House Ethics Committee Leak
Last week, the cable news networks were blanketing their shows with stories about the leaking of a report from the House Ethics Committtee detailing the nearly 30 lawmakers under investigation by the committee. Despite all of the bombast of cable news anchors over the investigations, the totality of the leak is less than meets the eye. Seventeen out of the twenty-nine lawmakers investigated by the committee have already been reported on and a number more had been connected to investigations previously, but their investigation had not previously been reported. In total, only seven investigations were released that were previously unreported, mostly for what would be minor infractions. This amounts to a pretty small amount of unknown investigations for what has turned into a big story.
Importantly, as many are highlighting, the leaked report does show that the Ethics Committee is doing its job. For years, the committee has taken heat for failing to investigate lawmakers and slow-walking those investigations when it does. Despite early clashes, it appear that the new, independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) has prompted the committee to investigate and review a number of cases regarding potential ethical misconduct by lawmakers. This is a positive development, however, the leaking may cause problems as many lawmakers are now associated with ethical problems despite the fact that they have not had a full hearing and could well find these ethics complaints dismissed.
On the actual investigations, the biggest information from the leak is that half of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee is under investigation for allegedly trading earmarks for campaign contributions. Previously, the public was aware that federal investigators and the committee were likely looking at Reps. John Murtha, Pete Visclosky and Jim Moran. Now we know that the committee is investigating those three lawmakers plus Reps. Bill Young, Marcy Kaptur, Norm Dicks and Todd Tiahrt. Aside from the probe of Rep. Charlie Rangel, this investigation involves the most serious allegations and could cause trouble for this bipartisan cast of lawmakers. Furthermore, it continues to show that the appropriations process, particularly for defense spending, is a failed process. This is now the third major investigation into defense appropriations in the past five years. Previously, Rep. Duke Cunningham was sentenced to prison for trading earmarks and appropriations for goodies and Rep. Jerry Lewis has been the subject of a similar federal investigation.
The other investigations involve four lawmakers probed for improperly receiving a tax break on their homes in Maryland or the District of Columbia; North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler is under investigation for a land swap deal; Florida Rep. Connie Mack is under investigation in connection to an earmark for Coconut Road that was submitted by Rep. Don Young; Rep. Joe Barton was under investigation for gifts given to a non-profit that he operates by companies with business before his committee, but he has since been exonerated. All the other lawmakers under investigation have been previously publicly reported.
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What’s Going on This Morning?
The above image is of the Connecticut legislature hard at work. I spot one game of free cell, one game of solitaire and one guy reading ESPN.com. This may be why they don’t allow computers on the floor of the House or Senate. Then again, you can always play crossword puzzles during committee hearings.
The New Republic has an excellent profile of Rep. John Murtha and the city of Johnstown, PA. This is one of the better pieces about the scandals swirling around the powerful Defense Appropriations Chair. This section stood out to me:
After much trial and error, in the mid-1980s, Murtha and Johnstown’s civic and business leaders finally arrived at an effective economic rescue strategy: leveraging Murtha’s position on the defense appropriations subcommittee to build a defense industry in Johnstown. For Murtha, it was a perfect solution–resolving the tension between foreign policy and local politics that had come to define his career. And it turned out to be a pretty good deal for Johnstown as well. “I remember being at some kind of party around 1983, and I met the head of economic development for the Pittsburgh region. And I said to him, ‘What would you do if you were running economic development here?’ ” recalls Mark Pasquerilla, who was then working for his father Frank, a shopping mall and hotel magnate and the richest man in Johnstown. “And he said–I remember this quote–‘I’ll tell you one thing that I would do: I’d grab onto Murtha’s coattails so tight, and I’d never let go.’ ”
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What Was I Reading Today?
A Bloomberg attempt to pry open the Federal Reserve moved forwards this week as Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in favor of the FOIA request for certain documents related to the Fed’s emergency lending. The Project On Open Government (POGO) lays out the story behind the case and explains that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will have to answer questions about the Fed’s transparency when he faces the Senate for his renomination hearing.
While President Obama and Defense Secretary Bob Gates have laid out a moderately ambitious plan for defense acquisition reform, Mother Jones finds that lobbyist-turned-Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn is standing in the way of further changes.
Public Citizen used Sunlight’s Party Time data to show that no one is throwing for fundraisers than the banks bailed out by the federal government. The influence lives on.
In a mind-boggling ruling, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will allow Rep. Pete Visclosky, under investigation for potential earmarking abuses in PMA Group scandal, to use campaign funds to pay the legal fees of his staff — including former staff. This means that Rep. Visclosky can pay the legal fees of PMA lobbyist Rich Kaelin because he is a former Visclosky staffer. As Zach Roth writes at TPM Muckraker, this also means that Rep. John Murtha could potentially pay for the legal fees of Paul Magliocchetti, the founder of the PMA Group, as Magliocchetti is a former Murtha staffer. Now you know where your campaign contributions are going.
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Earmark My Words
What do top earmarkers talk about in Congress? Does our money go where their mouths are?
In the case of the top ten earmarkers for FY 2008, the top words they used from 2007-2008 (110th Congress) do often align with their duties in either the Appropriations Committee or in bringing home the bacon to their home state. Six of the top ten use appropriations-related language in their top words and three use their state’s name in their top words.
The top ten earmarkers for FY 2008 were, in descending order with top word in parentheses, Rep. John Murtha (Billion), Rep. Jerry Lewis (Appropriations), Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young (Defense), Rep. Pete Visclosky (Indiana), Rep. David Obey (Billion), Rep. Norm Dicks (Million), Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Trade), Rep. Harold Rogers (Kentucky), Rep. Ike Skelton (Military), Rep. Chet Edwards (Veterans). Only one of these lawmakers (Rep. Skelton) is not on the House Appropriations Committee.
Three of these lawmakers — Reps. Lewis, Murtha and Visclosky — are either under federal investigation or have been mentioned in connection to an investigation in relation to their earmarking practices.
Check out the following word cloud visualization to see what these earmarking lawmakers are talking about. Below the visualization is a list of the Appropriations committee assignment for the nine lawmakers on the committee.
Appropriations Committee Assignments Rep. John Murtha Chairman, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Jerry Lewis Ranking Member, House Appropriations Committee Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young Ranking Member, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Pete Visclosky Chairman, Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee (currently surrendered position); Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. David Obey Chairman, House Appropriations Committee; Chairman, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Norm Dicks Chairman, Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee; Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Marcy Kaptur Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee; Transportation, HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Harold Rogers Ranking Member, Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee; Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Ike Skelton Not on Appropriations Committee Rep. Chet Edwards Chairman, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee; Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee Note: Earmark data comes via Taxpayer.net. Word data comes from CapitolWords.org. Only House lawmakers were used due to less than stellar earmark disclosure by the Senate. And thanks again to Kerry Mitchell for the visuals.
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Weekly Media Roundup – May 15, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:Saturday evening, Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, appeared on CNN talking about Recovery.gov. She made the point that Recovery.gov needs to be updated in real time so people can keep government accountable as it happens, instead of after the fact. Below is the video of the segment:
The New York Times published an editorial calling for Congress to provide Congressional Research Service reports online for all Americans to access free. The Times ran the editorial a week after Ellen met with an editorial writer at the paper. Last week, The Times published an article about the campaign being waged by Open CRS, a project of the Center for Democracy and Technology, OpenTheGovernment.org and Sunlight to get Congress to agree to release all CRS reports to the public.
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Weekly Media Roundup – May 1, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:David Herbert with the National Journal (subscription required) wrote about the grades new media experts from across the political spectrum gave the Obama administration’s Web presence. The experts gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+. Although they mostly see it as an improvement from the previous administration’s site, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and other interactive features. Herbert quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, “This occasional use of interactive tools” is impressive, but “90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush.” Recovery.gov, the administration’s site where citizens can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds, fared even worse in the Journal’s poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, Herbert writes, is that it’s “the view from 30,000 feet,” as Micah Sifry, senior technology advisor for Sunlight and Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) co-founder, told him. Without providing on-the-the ground details, Recovery.gov offers taxpayers few tools for staying on top of where their money is going, reviewers said. Recovery.gov has competition in the form of privately-operated Recovery.org, which has “more granular data and a real search tool, which one assumes we’ll eventually see on Recovery.gov,” Micah explains. “I don’t think it’s fair to compare this site to other Web sites yet, as it’s just weeks old,” Micah added. “Let’s take another look in three to six months, OK?”
Chris Lefkow with Agence France-Presse gained a different take by interviewing academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups on the administration’s technology efforts. Lefkow writes that they all said the first “tech president” is off to a good start. Lefkow quotes John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, “their first pronouncements are very encouraging,” and added that the challenge, however, is going to be the implementation. Andrew Resiej, Sunlight’s other senior technology advisor and PDF co-founder, said the administration been doing as much as it can to fulfill its promises in regards to transparency and technological innovation. “However they’ve been constrained by decades of industrial-age rules and regulations and procurement protocols that are handicapping the speed at which they can implement that vision,” he said.
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PMA Group Brought Large Return on Investment for Clients
In 2008, the PMA Group was hired by forty clients as their lone lobbying firm. These clients, largely seeking earmarks, secured a huge return on their investment in the PMA Group. After paying the PMA Group a combined $4.065 million in lobbying expenses, these forty organizations, a mix of companies and nonprofits, received $113.9 million in earmarks in 2008 — a 2,703% return on investment.Since falling under investigation for the alleged improper use of campaign contributions and possible favor trading in Congress, the PMA Group disbanded, leaving many of their lobbyists to flee for other top firms or create their own new firms. These lobbyists should come as prized possessions to any new lobbying firm as evidenced by the amount of money they can bring to a firm seeking earmarks.
The Windber Research Institute, performing research studies on women’s breast cancer, received the largest return on investment, 59,900%. After paying the PMA Group $20,000 for the year, the military research hospital received a $12 million earmark from Rep. John Murtha. The Winder Research Institute, located in Rep. Murtha’s district, has for years relied on federal funding through federal grants and the earmarking process to continue its research missions. According to an earlier report by my colleague Anupama Narayanswamy, Rep. Murtha earmarked $15 million in the previous year and his support was promoted by the Institure on their Web site.
Many of the other PMA Group clients receiving a large return on investment include recipients of earmarks from the three lawmakers believed to be under the most scrutiny in the PMA investigation, Reps. Murtha, Pete Visclosky, and James Moran. Of the clients in the top ten on return on investment, five of them received earmarks from Rep. Murtha, three received earmarks from Rep. Visclosky, and one received an earmark from Rep. Moran.
In the search for earmarks, lobbying expenses must be considered the principal investment for firms seeking funds. As one can see in the chart below — listing the top ten returns on investment for PMA Group clients — small lobbying expenses consistently translated into much larger returns. For the full forty clients that only retained PMA Group lobbyists, none received lower than a 525% return on investment.
Top Ten PMA Clients & Return on Investment (ROI) Client Lobbying Expenses Total $ in Earmarks ROI Sponsoring Lawmaker Windber Research Institute $20,000 $12,000,000 59,900% Murtha, John Information Systems Laboratories $10,000 $1,600,000 15,900% Hunter, Duncan Maine Marine Manufacturing $15,000 $1,800,000 11,900% Allen, Tom; Collins, Susan; Snowe, Olympia; Michaud, Mike Mts Technologies $40,000 $4,200,000 10,400% Murtha, John Sa Photonics $20,000 $2,000,000 9,900% Pelosi, Nancy Optimal Solutions & Technologies $30,000 $1,600,000 5,233% Visclosky, Pete Concurrent Technologies Corp $320,000 $14,600,000 4,463% Dicks, Norm; Murtha, John; Bishop, Sanford; Young, Bill; Hobson, David Prologic Inc $240,000 $10,400,000 4,233% Murtha, John; Baucus, Max; Tester, Jon; Visclosky, Pete; Moran, James; Doyle, Mike; Kingston, Jack Advanced Concepts & Technologies Intl $70,000 $3,000,000 4,185% Visclosky, Pete; Edwards, Chet Conemaugh Health Systems $240,000 $9,600,000 3,900% Murtha, John -
Decline in Campaign Fund Fortunes for PMA Linked Trio
Three lawmakers closely linked to the PMA Group lobbying and earmarks investigation have seen their collective campaign fundraising drop by 58% compared to the first quarter of 2007, according to the Washington Post. Reps. John Murtha, James Moran, and Pete Visclosky all were top recipients of campaign donations from the PMA Group — before it disbanded — and its clients.
Visclosky is the only one of the three to renounce campaign donations from former PMA Group lobbyists and former PMA Group clients. He has also forgone all earmarks for private firms. Unfortunately, this makes the connection between the contributions and the earmarks all the more clear, raising more questions about the Indiana congressman’s prior actions than in quelling the potential pay-to-play questions. As my colleague Bill Allison writes, “Let’s see…could there be a connection?”
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The Appropriate Culture of Corruption
The New York Times reports today on what could be the next great lobbying scandal. After his house and offices were raided by the FBI, Paul Magliocchetti, top lobbyist at the PMA Group, is shuttering his lobby shop. Once seen as the top earmark factory in Washington, the PMA Group fell apart weeks before the FBI raid occurred as rumors circulated that Magliocchetti was under investigation for various reasons, including making fraudulent campaign contributions and potentially trading contributions and gifts for legislative actions–earmarks–from legislators.
According to the Times, Magliocchetti was a pioneer and master of the earmarking process who skirted as close to the ethical line as possible:
[S]everal former PMA lobbyists and former Congressional staff members, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation from lawmakers close to Mr. Magliocchetti, said that for decades he sought loopholes to shower food, drink and gifts on the members and staff members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee.
He regularly arranged food deliveries for late-working committee staff members, for example, taking advantage of an exception written into the fine print of the ethics code, the former PMA lobbyists and Congressional staff members said. And each year he hosted lawmakers and their staff members at a legendary Christmas party at the Alpine or, more recently, at the Army Navy golf club, that fit into a gift-rule exception for “widely attended events.”
Mr. Magliocchetti helped pioneer the lucrative specialty of helping contractors lobby for military earmarks, the several billion dollars in pet spending items that members of the panel insert in annual spending bills, often with little oversight.
Many are beginning to question whether Magliocchetti is the new Jack Abramoff; the next lobbyist who could ensnare dozens in a corrupt conspiracy. My colleague Bill Allison offered his thoughts on the Magliocchetti-Abramoff comparison at the Real Time Investigations blog:
I’ve told a few people that while the PMA Group scandal is different from Abramoff, in many ways it’s more serious. Abramoff was a sort of Bernard Madoff character, unique in his personal excesses, corrosively corrupting, but still just one guy. PMA Group is a methodical business. It rakes in millions of dollars in lobbying fees. Its employees and PAC contributes a few hundred thousand to various congressional campaign committees and leadership PACs. Its clients get hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and billions more in federal contracts. Abramoff’s excesses were fairly unique; PMA Group’s business model is standard operating procedure in Washington.
And for the most part I agree with this assessment. (Abramoff’s operation was tightly wound up in a racket to ensure the maintanence of power by then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay. So, he wasn’t quite a rogue grifter.) PMA Group’s excess highlights what one could call a “culture of corruption” that exists around the Appropriations Committee, most prominently in the House.
When we look at the scandals of the last few years, these Appropriations Committee members keep popping up. Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, Alan Mollohan, and now, the Magliocchetti connected John Murtha. Others have come under close scrutiny for their practices including Bill Young, Hal Rogers, Pete Visclosky, and James Moran. It really is an epidemic when this many members of a single committee bring this kind of attention (in many cases, federal investigations) to themselves.
It’s doubtful that lawmakers, especially appropriators, want any sunshine shed on the relationships between appropriators and appropriations seeking lobbyists. Perhaps some stricter disclosure rules would help to stop the ethical tightrope walk that the appropriations process has become.
