Our Party Time hostess, Nancy Watzman, looks back fondly over her two weeks of Democratic and Republican convention party crashing and provides some highlights.  The Party Time project documented more than 400 parties during the two conventions, and Watzman, along with Sunlight Foundation communications director Gabriela Schneider, tried to “crash” as many as they could and blog on what they saw. Their reporting shows that despite a new ethics law in effect for the first time this year, members of Congress made merry with lobbyists at the conventions.

Read Watzman’s post to find out which party featured the best slogan—”Vote for real estate!” Find out where she observed partiers eating Caesar salad in a shot-glass, exemplifying the best “toothpick exemption” food. Read about the best no show event—a party sponsored by U.S. Bank and Visa to honor freshmen Democratic lawmakers, a party that got a lot of sunlight and exposure in the media. Learn about the most creative application of ethics law, a Kanye West concert that House members and staffers had to pay for but senators and Senate staff could attend for free. The best party-attendee perk went to the luxury porta-potties outside a Denver event. And for best definition of a “customer”, check out the account of a party thrown by Qwest CEO Ed Mueller.

Party Time doesn’t end now that the convention parties are over. The project now turns to the thousands of invitations to fundraisers and members of Congress that Watzman and staff have been collecting. There is a lot of partying happening this month, as congressional candidates get ready to report their third-quarter fundraising totals (pdf) to the U.S. Federal Election Commission on September 30. As they say over at Party Time, party on.

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Last week, finger food and Kanye; this week, finger food and Tom DeLay. The convention parties have already kicked off in St. Paul and you can still follow intrepid party-reporter Nancy Watzman at Party Time.

Brian Ross and the ABC investigative team were in St. Paul last night and found quite a few parties happening:

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Though preferred solutions to these issues might differ, I think that the issues identified in these Gallup polls–which potential voters rank as the most important facing the country, or the most important in determining their votes in the congressional elections, would be hard to argue with: The situation in Iraq, terrorism, the economy & jobs, immigration, education and health care. Right now we are in the midst of the election season, and candidates are, to a greater or lesser extent, putting before the public their views on these issues, while trying, during the last few days that remain on the pre-election legislative calendar, to address some of these concerns (for example, building a wall to deter illegal immigration, adotping new rules governing the treatment of terrorism suspects held by the United States, and approving spending for operations in Iraq and Afghinistan. As citizens, we may or may not agree with what Congress is doing, we might prefer a more robust debate on these issues, we might even have preferred it if members of Congress had begun addressing these concerns much earlier in this legislative session rather than schedule so few working days.

Be that as it may, inside the Beltway Cocoon, Congress’s belated interest in the people’s business is getting in the way of Congress’s real business, Jeffrey Birnbaum of The Washington Post reports:

Congress plans to recess at the end of this week and to return only briefly after the Nov. 7 elections to complete some odds and ends. Along the way, energy companies, physicians, small-business owners and high-tech firms — all favorites of the Republican majority — have been deprived of legislative victories.

“That’s the source of a lot of frustration,” said John J. Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, one of Washington’s most potent corporate lobbies and a frequent GOP ally. “The substantive agenda is getting run over by the political agenda.”

Washington lobbyists and voters from back home who are visiting at the behest of trade associations are packing congressional offices — making last-minute pitches for pet proposals such as beefed-up write-offs for restaurant renovations and the extension of an expired tax credit for corporate research.

The “substantive agenda” to Washington insiders is often at odds with the “political agenda” — apparently here defined as the silly concerns of the voting public like war and health care and having a decent family income that distract attention from important concerns like giving beefed-up write-offs for restaurant renovations and extensions of corporate tax credits.

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Here’s more information on the Center for Public Integrity’s upcoming report on congressional travel sponsored by third parties. The Center has put together a database and a package of stories and analysis looking at the sponsors and the travelers–both elected representatives and their staff. As I mentioned below, I suspect that we’ll find that Congress is flying as frequently on the dimes of special interests as it did in the past, although I’m curious to see whether the sponsors have changed all that much. When CPI looked at that same phenomenon for the 1998 book The Buying of the Congress by Charles Lewis, we analyzed a year and a half of travel disclosures–from 1996 and the first six months of 1997. Back then, we found, among the top 20 sponsors, the Aspen Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, AIPAC, the Securities Industry Association, the Florida Sugar Cane League, the Edison Electric Institute, the Tobacco Institute, and the National Cable Television Association, to name a few.

It’s interesting to reread the Center’s old findings –

In all, 443 members of Congress–eighty-seven Senators and 356 Representatives–and 2,020 congressional employees accpeted “free” trips worth a total of at least $8.6 million from various special interests, finding essential facts in such places as Athens, Greece; Auckland, New Zealand; Bordeaux, France; Katmandu, Nepal; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and St. Moritz, Switzerland, to name just a handful.

To find out the extent to which this past is prologue, go the Center’s Web site…

On Monday, June 5th, the Center will launch Power Trips, an extensive investigative report on privately sponsored travel by members of Congress and their aides. The findings, which reveal that members of Congress and their staff took thousands of trips worth millions of dollars to destinations around globe, are based on an analysis of more than 25,000 travel disclosure documents.

To mark the release of this major report the Center will hold a press conference together with project partners, the American Public Media programs Marketplace and AmericaRadioWorks and Northwestern University’s Medill News Service on Monday morning in Washington, D.C.

Watch the press conference on our web site on a live streaming video feed starting at 11 a.m. ET.

Participate in the press conference by submitting questions by email. When the 11 a.m. video feed starts, follow the link from our home page to the form where you can submit your question. We will be on site reading all the emails coming and may answer your questions on the air.

Guest speakers at the press conference will include: Wendell Rawls, Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity; Ellen Shearer, the Assistant Dean at Northwestern University’s Medill School and the Co- Director of the Medill News Service; and Chris Farrell, Economics Editor for American Public Media’s Marketplace, Marketplace Money and American RadioWorks.

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Here’s an interesting bit from a weekend Washington Post article on the increased pace of investment in ethanol producing plants in Iowa (and elsewhere):

“Every time a plant is built,” said Bill Horan, “that’s 500 more ethanol supporters in a congressman’s district. And they really care. It’s not just Ma and Pa on the farm. It’s their dentist son in Chicago who’s interested in his inheritance, and his sister in San Francisco.”

Now why would ethanol producers need the support of members of Congress?

… suppose the price of oil declines — if, for example, the economies in China and India slip, the global oil market grows calm and a booming ethanol supply outstrips demand. Suppose Congress supports President Bush’s recent call to eliminate the tariff of 54 cents a gallon on plentiful Brazilian ethanol.

“This is a cyclical business. There are going to be ups and downs,” said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, the biofuel trade organization. “But demand for these fuels is going to grow. Of that I’m absolutely certain.”

Energy is indeed a brutal, cyclical business, the downside of which George W. Bush had more than a passing familiarity with in his private sector days. Having friendly members of Congress benignly ensuring that demand for one’s particular industry segment is going to grow–through mandating ethanol blended fuel and the like–seems to ensure that whichever way the wheel turns, the cash doesn’t stop flowing.

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