On Saturday, The Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed from Sen. Joe Lieberman in which he called on President Bush to make all documents public regarding his presidential library. This followed President Bush’s press conference on Feb. 28 where he discussed his planned $200-million-plus library in Dallas on the campus of Southern Methodist University, saying that he would accept donations from foreign sources and that if donors wanted their names kept confidential he would consider that request, according to The New York Times.

Fundraising for presidential libraries continues to be a blind spot when it comes to disclosure. Unlike contributions to an electoral campaign, gifts to the libraries are unlimited and undisclosed, and they can receive money from corporations and foreign governments. As Think Progress reports, Bush-the-Elder accepted large donations from foreign governmental figures, including a donation that is believed to be in excess of $1 million from the United Arab Emirates. A presidential pardon for a six-figure contributor to Bill Clinton’s library and political campaigns left the indelible impression with many that a presidential pardon was purchased, according to 2007 congressional testimony of colleague Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Good for Lieberman for calling out Bush.

Openness and transparency in the way government does business is not a passing fancy for Lieberman. He was the lead sponsor of the E Government Act of 2002 and is the sponsor of the proposed E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007. 

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The fundraising for presidential libraries continues to be a blind spot when it comes to disclosure and an open and transparent government. Unlike contributions to an electoral campaign, gifts to the libraries are unlimited and undisclosed, and they can take money from corporations and foreign governments. This is worth repeating: Presidential libraries have no restrictions on the size of financial contributions they can receive, and they are not required to report who their contributors are. Plus, they can receive gifts from corporations and foreign governments! It is illegal for political campaigns to receive contributions from corporations and foreign governments. And another egregious aspect of presidential library fundraising that all of this unlimited, undisclosed fundraising involving corporations and foreign governments is going on while the nation’s chief executive is still in office…The most powerful man or woman in the world. As Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics and friend, said in testimony to Congress in February 2007, "The potential (for corruption with the libraries) may be far greater than in the campaign finance system."

On Thursday of last week, President Bush held a press conference where he discussed his planned $200-million-plus library in Dallas on the campus of Southern Methodist University. He was asked about whether he would accept donations from foreign sources and would he disclose the source of all funds. Bush said he would probably accept foreign donations and would consider keeping the donors’ names confidential if they do not want to be identified, according to The New York Times. As Think Progress reports, George H. W. Bush (#41) accepted large donations from foreign governmental figures, including a donation that is believed to be in excess of $1 million from the United Arab Emirates.

In her congressional testimony, Sheila voiced concern that since the Bush presidency was far from over donors will contribute to the library in order to gain access and favors. A presidential pardon for a six-figure contributor to (former President Bill) Clinton’s library and political campaigns left the indelible impression with many that a presidential pardon was purchased, Krumholz said.

The Center for Responsive Politics and others have called on Congress to pass legislation requiring the public disclosure of contributions to presidential library projects in order to prevent the obvious invitation for corruption. The Center has endorsed a proposal to require the online disclosure of contributions exceeding $200 a quarter, which is very much like the way electoral campaigns have to report their activity. Other disclosure proposals exist, such as the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 1254), which requires the disclosure of contributors to the libraries.

Come on folks, this is a no brainer.

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Every single time we look around one Senator or another (in our experience usually a Republican) is blocking a piece of legislation that would require greater transparency for the work of Congress. First, it was Sen. Ted Stevens who had a secret hold on the Coburn-Obama bill that ultimately passed after pressure from the blogosphere, then there is Sen. Mitch McConnell who is effectively is hiding the Senator who is blocking a bill that would create electronic filing for Senators' campaign finance reports, and now there's Sen. Stevens (seems to be a pattern here)… who blocked the markup of legislation that would provide transparency for presidential library donations, which currently have no official disclosure requirements.

According the the BNA Money and Politics Report,

The presidential library measure, which was advanced earlier this year by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), would require organizations established to raise funds for future presidential libraries to report on a quarterly basis all contributions of $200 or more.

Under the new bill, contributions would be reported to the National Archives, which has responsibility for overseeing the operations of presidential libraries. Current law says that donations for a presidential library can be unlimited in size and do not need to be disclosed, unless they come from a federal political committee or other entity that must disclose its expenditures.

Obviously fund raising for presidential libaries while the president is still in office is highly problematic. Good example from BNA: "Fund raising for President Bush's future presidential library reportedly is going on now, and the estimated cost of the future Bush library is believed to be as much as $500 million."

Sen. Stevens has apparently obected that the new law would be prospective, e.g. it would capture what is going on now and in the future, but not the fundraising by former presidents and he's interested in former President Bill Clinton's fundraising for his library. But that's ridiculous. All legislation is prospective There is a very real conflict of interest in private contributions to a sitting president to fund his legacy library. The public ought to know who's contributing this money, in real time.

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We’ve been following the progress of a couple of bills making their way through Congress. H.R. 1309 puts a little more teeth in our Freedom of Information Act–the main lever that the press and the public has for prying documents out of the executive branch (and see here for useful FOIA tips maintained by Investigative Reporters & Editors), while S. 223 would, for the first time, require campaign committees of Senate candidates to file their contribution and expenditure information electronically with the Federal Election Commission rather than sending in stacks of paper (both House and Presidential candidates file electronically).

There are other measures that are worth noting as well (with votes on all scheduled in the House for today and tomorrow). For me, the most interesting is H.R. 1254, which would force presidential library foundations to make their donor lists public. It is unseemly enough to have a foundation seeking millions of dollars from donors–corporate and individual, U.S. and foreign–to build what is essentially a monument to a former president; that they can do so anonymously, while that president is still in office, is a recipe for corruption (The name Marc Rich immediatley springs to mind for some reason…)

H.R. 1255 establishes procedures for releasing presidential records, and overturning the 2001 executive order from President George W. Bush that sharply restricted (and in many cases out-and-out eliminated) public access to these government documents. I’d actually like to see a government records act that goes a little further–former government officials generally have not only much better but also lengthy periods of exclusive access to their records. In 1992, Steve Weinberg wrote a book (along with my old shop, the Center for Public Integrity, called For Their Eyes Only: How Presidential Appointees Treat Public Documents As Personal Property that documented the ways in which presidential appointees “take classified documents with them after leaving public service, use the materials to write lucrative memoirs, and then seal off these documents for decades from historians, journalists, and other researchers.” It’s not just presidential papers to which the public needs better access.

H.R. 985 expands whistleblower protections–protecting agency employees who report waste, fraud, abuse, illegalities and other malfeasance to members of Congress or Inspectors General from administration retribution.

Finally, H.R. 1362 addresses shortcomings in the government’s relationships with private contractors. Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, has a summary of the bill’s provisions here. Just a quick observation on this–I’d like to have seen a provision that would try to determine why, for so many contracts for which there is open bidding, only one bidder shows up (which seems to me to be almost as bad as no-bid contracts, and as much of a problem). In 2005, the last year for which we have complete data, ten percent of contracts–worth nearly $40 billion–were awarded under that scenario, according to our friends at FedSpending.org.

All these bills would add to our ability to know what government is up to and keep it accountable–not a bad couple of day’s work for the House if they pass them…

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