Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new web site, Pass223.com, to harness the distributed power of the Internet to pressure the Senate into increasing disclosure of campaign contributions by passing a bill - S. 223, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act - requiring senators to file their contribution reports electronically.

We need your help to pass this bill. Please follow the link to Pass223.com and call your senators to find out where they stand on S. 223. The site has full instructions on who your senators are, how to call, what to say, and how to report back to us. For more detail on the bill, keep reading.

Currently, presidential candidates and candidates running for the House of Representatives file their campaign contributions in electronic form. Electronic filing speeds the process by which campaign contribution data reaches the public over the Internet, allowing citizens and journalists to more easily spot a conflict of interest or an inappropriate contribution. Filers in the Senate do not file electronically, delaying disclosure by weeks and possibly months.

Passage of S. 223 appears to be a “no-brainer,” and isn’t publicly opposed by any senator. However, at every step of the way over the past year and a half the bill has been interrupted and blocked for a variety of reasons.

Right now, Sen. John Ensign (pronounced en-sen) is blocking the bill by insisting on adding a poison pill amendment. This poison pill is meant to protect senators from legitimate ethics complaints filed by outside groups. The amendment would impose an unconstitutional burden on on charities, religious organizations and other nonprofits by forcing them to disclose their donors when they file ethics complaints against sitting senators. Ensign’s amendment is opposed by a group of non-profits, religious groups, and charities from the right and the left.

For S. 223 to pass, Ensign’s amendment must be defeated. And to do that, we need you help in identifying senators who OPPOSE Ensign and SUPPORT S. 223. This is a great chance to help pass a long overdue bill.

Go to Pass223.com and get started calling your senators (remember, you have two of them). Don’t forget to report back so that we know where these senators stand on increasing campaign finance disclosure.

Pass223.com is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation, Public Citizen, Public Campaign, Center for Responsive Politics, Campaign Finance Institute, Change Congress, and Open the Government.

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It looks like congressional Republicans have seen MAPLight.org - the insanely useful money-for-votes tracker - and they like the idea. (Also see: National Association of Home Builders.) That idea being that money equals votes and votes equal money and therefore interests that they vote in favor of should kick back some campaign cash to reward their votes:

With the House Democrats’ refusal to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies — stalling the rewrite of the warrantless wiretapping program — GOP leadership aides are grumbling that their party isn’t getting more political money from the telecommunications industry.

Like most corporate interests with a heavy stake in Congressional action, the major phone companies significantly boosted their contributions to Democrats last year after the party surged back into the majority.

…

“When those numbers are made evident, it causes some angst,” one Republican lobbyist said. “Leadership are told by staff, who look through this. There’s communication back and forth” between GOP leadership and downtown.

“There’s no question that from time to time staff, and maybe some Members, say to fellow travelers: ‘Are you giving us some air cover? Are you helping us help you?’”

This situation highlights a potential difficulty in aligning campaign contributions for votes and, in return, votes for campaign contributions. There are two views by which one could look at this:

1) From the congressional Republican standpoint, it looks like they are getting stiffed in a tough election year by telecom companies even though they are voting to support the bottom line of those same companies. The Republicans expect that their support, by casting votes, should lead to campaign contributions. Conclusion: Voting a certain way gets you money.

2) From the telecom company perspective, Republicans are going to vote to support their interests no matter what, while Democrats are more likely to oppose them. Some of these Democrats could be swayed with cash in their coffers. So the money obviously goes to the members you need to influece, i.e., the Democrats. Conclusion: Money buys you votes.

While these two views usually line up (as depicted in the complicated diagram on the left), this instance shows that the money-for-votes, votes-for-money calculus does not always add up. Tough situation for congressional Republicans. I guess leaking a story with anonymous quotes is the other way to get campaign contributions in Washington.

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Last week, the National Association of Home Builders announced that it was suspending PAC contributions to members of Congress because of the failure to obtain a tax-break provision they desperately wanted. (I’m sure that they aren’t too happy about the bashing they’re taking over the mortgage meltdown.) This action isn’t being treated with open arms by other lobbyists and industry shops. Why, you ask? Well, because the NAHB is explicitly stating that their PAC contributions are tied to votes by members of Congress. Straight from the horse’s mouth: contributions buy votes. Listen to these lobbyists try to distance themselves from NAHB (via The Hill):

“It’s not going to make a damn bit of difference,” said one senior business lobbyist, who said that the $10,000 limits on contributions to candidates’ campaigns were too low for such a threat to have any bite.

A spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, Mary Trupo, said her group had no opinion about the NAHB’s move except that “it’s not a tactic that we would take.” She added, “We continue to support members who have been supportive of the housing sector.”

“I’m embarrassed by what the homebuilders did,” said one lobbyist, who characterized the NAHB’s move as “inappropriate behavior.”

Of course, acknowledging fact in Washington is often "inappropriate behavior".

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My long time colleague and friend Nancy Watzman at Public Campaign writes over at the Huffington Post that despite all the talk about netroots and a democratization of fund raising via the Internet that when it comes to campaign finance for the presidential candidates big donors still significantly dominate. In the last presidential election, it was the early money — raised from people giving a $1,000 or more that established the front runners.

Nancy quotes a Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study that found in the first six months of 2007, the candidates received nearly three-quarters of their funds in amounts of $1,000 or more. For Giuliani, Romney and Clinton, the figure exceeds 80 percent. When it comes to small contributions ($200 or less), Obama is raised $16.4 million, more than the rest of the Democratic field combined, as well as the entire Republican field combined. As impressive as that is, he still raised three-fifths of his funds in amounts of $1,000 or more. Overall, in the second quarter of fund raising, there was an increase of 84 percent in small contributions over first quarter totals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).But still the small money is dwarfed by the big donors.

The campaigns are to file third quarter reports on Monday. And one thing is for sure, the reports will show they have received the lion’s share of their funds from large donors. For House and Senate campaigns this is even more of the case.

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