In today’s edition, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reports that the annual Washington Mardi Gras party kicks off tonight at the Washington Hilton, a weekend-long event billed as "one of the most sought-after tickets in any season in Washington." The event’s parties, the paper says, "are arguably the most intimate gatherings of businesspeople, politicians and lobbyists left in Washington" after new congressional ethics rules were adopted. Writing that the parties are"a throwback to the days when politicians and lobbyists socialized regularly outside the glare of the public spotlight," the paper added that they are "largely immune to the new ethics standards."

A secretive, Louisiana-based group headed by a lobbyist and former aide to now lobbyist and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) organizes the event. The organization declined to name this year’s corporate sponsors, but in years past they included R.J. Reynolds, BellSouth, and Lockheed Martin, according to the paper.

This weekend’s parties at the Hilton is clear evidence that despite passing new ethics rules last year, Congress has much work to do to realize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) claim that the link between lobbyist and legislatures has been broken. In its story, The Times-Picayune interviewed Sunlight grantee Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, as asking, "What better occasion than Mardi Gras to demonstrate that the new rules are a farce?" Indeed.

What specifically is at issue here is the section of the new law regarding banning gifts from lobbyists to members of Congress and their staff. Most gifts are banned, but loopholes exist. This weekend’s Mardi Gras parties are considered "widely attended" functions, one of the loopholes allowing lobbyists to purchase tickets and give them as gifts to members and their staff. Also, the numerous receptions held in conjunction with the parties "are allowed under a separate exception because they aren’t sit-down meals: Only hors d’oeuvres are served," the paper writes. Last week, McClatchy Newspapers highlighted this "toothpick rule," where all is fine as long as members of Congress and their staff are not provided with silverware and a table and chair.

Earlier this week, The Hill newspaper spotlighted another problem with the gift ban. The House and Senate interpreted one aspect of the rules differently. It has been a long tradition for lobbyists to buy tickets to ritzy charity events, requesting that the some of the tickets be given to certain members of Congress and/or their staff. These charity events are popular with lawmakers, The Hill writes, by allowing them to socialize and interact with "Hollywood stars, business titans, sports figures and other noted celebrities." Obviously, anyone concerned about good government would have a problem with lobbyists doling out such prized perks to members of Congress and their staff. The Senate has ruled that these gifts are outlawed by the gift ban. The House has decided to allow the practice to continue for its members.

Craig Holman at Public Citizen’s Watchdog Blog wrote how he was not surprised by the decision by the House ethics committee in light of another very recent decision. In December, the committee ruled that lobbyists can throw lavish parties for lawmakers at the national conventions if two or more lawmakers are honored at the party. "It is becoming clear that we have a rogue House ethics committee that has not changed much since Tom DeLay," he writes.

And another beef we have at the Sunlight Foundation is that it’s past time for Congress to set up systems allowing lobbyists to file electronically all reporting requirements. The Lobbyist Disclosure Act of 1995 required this over a decade ago, but the House and Senate have failed to follow through. We agree with at Public Citizen when they called on Congress to require quarterly reports be filed electronically and establish a searchable, sortable and downloadable Web-based database that includes separate electronic fields for each record required to be disclosed, especially bill numbers and issue areas lobbied. In fact, we’d go further. It would be nothing for lobbyists to press the "send button" on their BlackBerrys and post their daily calendars on line.

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Earlier today, the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) and Public Citizen released an extensive study that found the majority of the bundlers and other fundraisers raising cash for the various 2008 presidential campaigns, over 2,000 individuals, come from only three segments of the U.S. economy: lawyers and law firms, three finance industries, and real estate. Among those industries, Republicans hold an edge in raising money from the real estate and lobbying industries. Democrats are receiving more funds from lawyers and law firms, as well as the entertainment industries. Democratic and Republican fundraisers appear to be doing a comparable job of raising cash from the securities and investment industry.

The two organizations are quick to point out that it is impossible to really know how much money each industry has given since the campaigns are not disclosing the precise amounts their fundraisers are raising. Each campaign is disclosing partial information, and each has different disclosure procedures. "The sporadic and incomplete reporting by campaigns of their designated fundraisers points to the need for legislation on this matter," the report says.

"Disclosure is important because these prodigious fundraisers are some of the people who will get their phone calls returned by the White House and will get chances at prestigious positions," Lisa Zagaroli with McClatchy Newspapers reported last month. Bundled contributions are among the most insidious sources of campaign money because they give a single donor the opportunity to get credit for raising contributions that are often hundreds of times greater than the legal limits applied to individuals.

As we discussed earlier this month, among the potentially meaningful and important changes to campaign finance law in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act is a provision that requires candidates for federal office to report the bundled contributions they receive from lobbyists.

At Sunlight, we believe bundled contributions from any party-CEOs, non-lobbyist lawyers and law firms-should be publicly disclosed. But, the new law limits such disclosure to registered lobbyists, which at least begins to get to the heart of the problem. The Federal Election Commission has the responsibility of crafting regulations that carry out the intent of the new law, and is expected to have its final regulations completed by March. As this great report from CFI and Public Citizen highlights so thoroughly, we hope the FEC’s regulations support more transparency rather than helping to conceal who’s funding the candidates.

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Lisa Zagaroli, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, reports on the growing importance of bundlers in presidential campaign fundraising. These "mega-fundraisers" are very skilled at using their business and personal contacts to raise large amounts of campaign cash for a specific candidate. Only a few presidential candidates have released any information on who is doing the bundling but we know that the bundlers usually have super access to the candidates. No presidential campaign has released both the names of their bundlers and the amount each individual fundraiser has raised. Each campaign has adopted varying degrees of disclosure on who is raising their big bucks.

On October 30, Congressional Quarterly reported that Federal Election Commission is working on new bundling rules. One proposal, which came out of the Congress, is to only disclose the bundlers who are federal lobbyists. The McClatchy report indicates that the FEC is interested in going beyond this.

McClatchy highlights Public Citizen’s Congress Watch and its site as the place to go to find out who some of the bundlers are. They also have a very good proposal on bundling openness and transparency.

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Two new reports shine light on waste, corruption and the buying of influence in Washington.

Earlier this week, U.S. PIRG released a report showing how the federal government continues to waste tens of billions in the process of outsourcing work to private companies. "Forgiving Fraud And Failure: Profiles In Federal Contracting" reports on how the feds continue to work with companies that did shoddy work and or were found to have committed fraud.

Last year, the federal government spent $422 billion outsourcing work to private companies, a 100 percent increase since 2000, all with precious little oversight. U.S. PIRG reports that loose rules, lack of competition, and limited accountability are the problems. PIRG’s suggestions: increase the disclosure of contract information; increasing competition among multiple bidders; and strengthening the screening of bad actors.

Our friends at POGO have been refining their "Federal Contractor Misconduct Database", a valuable tool for investigative journalists and citizens who want to see the rap sheets on companies our government hires. The fact that these contractors are also large campaign donors just rounds out the equation.

Public Citizen’s Watchdog Blog reports on how industry shills are attempting to buy their way into positions of power bundling cash for presidential candidates. WhiteHouseForSale.org is the place to go to find out who is bundling cash for whom. CBS looked into the bundlers for Bush, and shows how they were rewarded with ambassadorships and other positions within government. At the regulatory agencies, Public Citizen reports, this cronyism has resulted in relaxed enforcement, big tax breaks and special earmarks for big business.

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Bundling, that is the practice of one donor gathering donations from many different individuals in an organization or community and presenting the sum to a campaign, is as popular as ever by the major presidential campaigns. The poster child for questionable bundling to 2008 campaign so far goes to the still highly suspect actions of Norman Hsu. Bundling has in past cycles raised concerns too. President Bush’s more infamous bundlers were Enron CEO Ken Lay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Taylor Lincoln at Public Citizen’s Watchdog blog shows how this practice is fraught with potential scandal.

Thanks to Public Citizen and their new 2008 version of its White House for Sale databasee, it’s now easier than ever to track the big bundlers for each of the presidential candidates. It also allows you to determine which bundlers are lobbyists. "With bundlers playing a bigger role than ever before in this race, anticipated to cost at least $1 billion," writes Katie Schlieper for Public Campaign. As she said, this is a great tool to use to connect the dots between donors, candidates, and policy priorities.

Last month, when Congress passed ethics legislation (still waiting to be signed as I write) they included a provision that requires members of Congress to disclose the names of lobbyists who bundle contributions of more than $15,000 for them. It’s a start. But Congress should further regulate the practice. As Public Citizen proposes:

Once campaigns make an oral or written agreement designating a person as a fundraiser and provide the fundraiser with some form of tracking mechanism, the campaign should be required to disclose the details of that person’s fundraising success as part of the campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission. Disclosure reports on bundlers should contain the following:

• The name, address, occupation and employer of each bundler;
• Each contribution of more than $200 raised by the bundler;
• The original source and date of each contribution of more than $200 raised by the bundler; and
• Total contributions raised by the bundler for each reporting period.

This would open the books for all to see who raised large sums of campaign money for the candidate.

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It’s not just because of the name that I like the idea behind this new report (actually, the first installment of a new report) from Public Citizen’s Congress Watch: it brings together several kinds of information on members of Congress in one place. It lets users look at contribution totals to incumbents from lobbyists, PACs, donors who don’t live in the member’s home state, small (under $200) donors, as well information on the junkets that members and their staff have taken. It also provides nice summary data by state (here’s New York, for example).

It’s nice having this summary data in one place, and I think the site goes a long way toward showing that neither party has clean hands when it comes to being under the influence of special interests: money seeks power, and incumbents, who need the former, have the latter.

Laura MacCleery, the director of CongressWatch, summarized their findings:

Overall, the data show the influence of money in politics is pervasive. Candidates across the political spectrum are far too dependent on big money donors, lobbyists, out-of-state money and goodies like privately funded travel. I will just highlight examples of the findings from just two of the states.

With regard to California, we point out that Rep. Bill Thomas ran uncontested in the 2004 election, yet still raised more than $2.6 million, relying largely on political action committees (PACs). Among members of the California delegation, Thomas received the highest amount of contributions from PACs per cycle ($1.8 million), the second-highest percentage of contributions from out of state (71.2 percent) and the third-highest amount of contributions from lobbyists per cycle ($122,980). Thomas also received only 18.6 percent of such contributions from small donors (calculation excludes PACs), giving him the fifth-lowest such ratio among members of California’s congressional delegation.

In Ohio, Rep. Michael Oxley was the highest recipient of contributions from lobbyists in the Ohio congressional delegation, averaging $167,048 per two-year election cycle. House Majority Leader John Boehner was second on the list of K Street recipients, at $147,833 per cycle. Oxley also had the greatest reliance on out-of-state donors, at $649,302 per cycle, accounting for an astounding 81.9 percent of Oxley’s contributions from individuals. Boehner was second in this category, as well, with $458,239 in out-of-state payments per cycle.

Some defend the system by saying that the money does not buy legislative votes, that it instead only buys access. That fine distinction separating legal from illegal influence is sometimes honored in the breach. We have seen a year filled with allegations that the funding for junkets, parties and candidates does indeed buy votes, as in the case of Abramoff’s influence-peddling political machinery.

MacCleery promises that the site will have cumulative rankings when all 50 states are done. I’m skeptical of such ranks, though, especially since they seem unable to capture the very human dimension–the anecdotal events that really bring clarity to who does what in Washington, like this item reported by Robert Novak:

Sen. Ted Stevens, considered the Republican king of pork, just before the pre-election congressional recess killed a requirement for the Defense Department to evaluate unauthorized earmarks imposed by members of Congress on the Pentagon.

Freshman Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had won Senate passage of the “report card” as part of the Defense appropriations bill. The evaluation would show that the military really does not want most of the estimated $8 billion in earmarks added by Congress this year.

However, Stevens succeeded in stripping the reform from the final version of the bill before it was signed by President Bush. Coburn intends to try to pass the report card as a freestanding bill during the lame-duck session following the election. Coburn has shown no hesitation in challenging Stevens, the Senate’s president pro tempore and senior Republican.

It will be interesting to see how Coburn and Stevens compare on the CongressWatch list…

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Public Citizen released a new report yesterday with some breathtaking figures in about lobbyist campaign contributions.

Major findings include that lobbyists and their political action committees have given over $100 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress since 1998 and that the top 6 percent of lobbyists — those giving a total of at least $10,000 each over eight years — gave 83 percent of all the money. Nearly three-quarters of all registered lobbyists had given no campaign money above the limit of $200. Many of the top recipients of  the money are on the appropriations committees. Thirty-six members of Congress have received a half-million dollars or more from lobbyists and their PACs since 1998. Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have each received more than $1 million. Of the 36 members in the half-million dollar club, 21 are Republicans and 15 are Democrats.

But they sure miss the boat when it comes to presentation. All I can find on their site is a PDF of the report but like most researchers I want to dig directly into the database but it’s not online! That means that their findings are really limited in their usefulness and audience. More importantly, it means that the shelf life of their terrific effort to compile the data is going to be really limited. This is a passive push-out of information at a time when you want to pull-in your readers and activists.

Why not use some Web 2.0 techniques to publish this report? if you did, the information becomes part of the greater body of knowledge about Congress and the role of lobbying and lobbyists so that other researchers and citizen journalists can build on it to make an ever clearer picture of what’s really going on in Congress. In the absence of that, we hope someone will take the time to add the relevant information to the Congresspedia.

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