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 Blanche Lincoln Energy & Climate Complex
Sen. Blanche Lincoln has put herself front and center in opposing efforts by her party’s leadership to pass or implement comprehensive caps on carbon emissions in the United States. She opposes the proposed cap and trade legislation that passed the House of Representatives and has been touted by President Barack Obama and senators John Kerry, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman. Similarly, she has signed on to legislation that would block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing their own regulations to cap carbon emissions should cap and trade legislation fail to pass Congress. In this effort she is aided by a coterie of former staffers who currently lobby for a variety of interests seeking to weaken or derail carbon capping whether through legislation or the EPA’s rule-making authority.
Six of Lincoln’s former staffers currently lobby for interests invested in influencing carbon capping legislation. These interests include oil & gas trade groups, agriculutural companies, the airplane industry and biofuel and bioenergy firms. As chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Lincoln holds a powerful position to influence carbon capping legislation and she has made no secret of her desire to block the legislation.(For a full visualization of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s former staffers lobbying for the energy and climate industries click here or the image to the right.) (Continue reading…)
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When Lobbying is Fraud
Sunlight has no stated position on grassroots lobbying disclosure, but I thought that this story was worth flagging as I’d imagine it is the clearest cut argument for such disclosure:
As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.
The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.
“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization,” said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville’s Hispanic community. “It’s this type of activity that undermines Americans’ faith in democracy.”
The faked letter from Creciendo Juntos was signed by “Marisse K. Acevado, Asst Member Coordinator,” an identity and position at Creciendo Juntos that do not exist.
The person who sent the letter has not been identified, but he or she was employed by a Washington lobbying firm called Bonner & Associates.
It turns out that this isn’t the first time that Bonner & Associates has forged letters on an issue. In terms of disclosure, Bonner & Associates has not filed a lobbying disclosure report since 2001, so we have no clue which client is paying the firm to forge letters and lie to lawmakers.
This reminds me of a story that got the whole lobbying disclosure train rolling back in the 1930s (lobbying disclosure as an issue had been around since the late 19th century, but only limited action was taken until the 1930s). During debate over the Public Utility Holding Company Act, a bill to regulate utility companies, there was serious concern over the lobbying efforts of the industry. Sen. Hugo Black, a long time critic of industry lobbying efforts and a future Supreme Court justice, set up an investigatory committee to examine efforts by the utility companies to block the bill’s passage. Black’s investigation was aided by a tip from Congressman Dennis Driscoll of upstate New York. Driscoll became suspicious when he received 800 telegrams in opposition to the bill, in alphabetical order, as if read from the phone book, from the residents of one town in his district. As it turned out, Associated Gas & Electric of Ithaca, New York paid an employee to “develop” one thousand telegrams to send to the congressman. This revelation of outright forgery helped push the bill to victory and necessitated a new provision in the bill: the disclosure of paid lobbying for all utility holding companies.
Perhaps someone might want to look into the despicable efforts of Bonner & Associates to trick lawmakers. Who knows what else is out there?
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Cap and Trade Underpants Gnomes
The pace for the cap and trade bill continues apace. Today, the House Rules Committee posted to their web site the bill number, H.R. 2998, for the draft of unknown origin that has become a point of much debate over the past few days. This bill, H.R. 2998, is set to replace H.R. 2454, the bill previously reported out of committee. As I wrote two days ago, we have little idea as to the negotiations that transformed the approximately 1,000 page H.R. 2454 into the 1,200 page H.R. 2998. If nothing else it reminded me of South Park’s underpants gnomes (for an image that might help explain the image below, see here). And thus I present this image that represents, to the best of our knowledge, how this bill grew overnight:
Phase 1: Report H.R. 2454 out of committee
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Replace H.R. 2454 with H.R. 2998
The House Rules Committee is currently deciding which of the 224 amendments proposed will be allowed a vote on the floor of the House. That could take a while. In the mean time we’ll all twiddle our thumbs and try to figure out what process led to this compromise bill.
Or you can go to ReadTheBill.org and tell Congress that they shouldn’t let this happen again. Tell them to support H. Res. 554 and require bills to be posted online for at least 72 hours prior to consideration.
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What the cap and trade rush does to advocacy
So, it looks as though the cap and trade bill will continue to sail toward a Friday vote despite the final version not being actually finalized. As I noted yesterday, this process prevents both the public and the lawmakers on Capitol Hill from having adequate time to review a critically important bill. The hurried process also spells danger for the many activist organizations and other actors seeking to have an effect on the end result. How can you lobby when you don’t know what you’re lobbying on? And how can you get your supporters to call Congress when you don’t know what to tell them?
Now some of these actors may already have a wing-tip or birkenstock in the door with their lobbyists, but that doesn’t do much for activating their membership. If no one knows what a bill will contain until 24 hours prior to consideration it is remarkably difficult to get a message to your representative to express your position on how they ought to vote. Even more complicated is to organize a membership around amendments to support or oppose. And this is, in many ways, why this process occurs. It stymies public interaction and voices, whether independent of a larger group or not.
Now this does not solely apply to the party in power now. Historically, leadership aims to control the pace of legislation. And why wouldn’t they? In Congress, time is just another tool of power.
In this case, time is being used to prevent citizen action and to reduce outside pressure on potentially wayward lawmakers. If the leadership wants to pass a bill and fears that calls from constituents to certain lawmakers may place the vote in jeopardy, rushing the bill to the floor will prevent an inundation of calls, especially from members of organizations organized around a particular bill.
If you are the Sierra Club or the Chamber of Commerce, you’re getting squeezed right now. (The same thing happened with groups organized around the FISA Amendments Act last year.) For the general public that wants their voice heard, you’re getting squeezed even harder.
This is a critical reason for Congress to establish a 72 hour rule. Not only does Congress need to read their bills. Not only does the public writ large deserve a chance to read the bills. But so do advocacy groups that organize and drive much of the public support or opposition to specific pieces of legislation.
If you think that bills should be made available for at least 72 hours before they are considered, go to ReadTheBill.org and tell your congressman to support legislation to create a 72 hour rule.
