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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NFL Owners, Executives Contribute In Run-Up to Labor Dispute
The Super Bowl may have been the most watched television program of all time, but many inside the National Football League and in Congress will be paying more attention to the league’s upcoming labor dispute with the NFL Player’s Association. Both the NFL and the union have stepped up their Washington lobbying presence over the past few years as Congress may get involved in the dispute. When it comes to campaign contributions, however, the team owners and executives are dominating the playing field.
Since 2007, NFL employees, executives, players and coaches have contributed a total of $1,285,940 to candidates for federal political office and the official NFL political action committee. According to data acquired from the Center for Responsive Politics, team owners, executives and top employees made 79% of those contributions ($1,021,436). Players make up only 9% of the contributions ($114,764).
(Continue reading…)
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Building a National Campaign for Transparency
What an exciting (and long and intense) few weeks it’s been.
When we got back into the office here at Sunlight on January 4th, we knew 2010 was the year we needed to build a national campaign of people calling for an open, transparent government everywhere across the country. We’ve known for months in fact, but honestly, we had no idea how people would respond when we put the word out.
Now, only three weeks later, a few very big events have unfolded, and each new event has created new opportunities – as well as more need for our collective action than ever before. In other words, it’s abundantly clear that we’re on the right track.
It’s time to start putting the pieces together, and we’ve updated our initial sign up page with a statement of need for a national campaign and our next 4 steps to launch it in March.
(Continue reading…)
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Check out your peanut butter here
This morning I visited the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website to check, in the face of the current salmonella outbreak, if the Kroger “natural creamy” peanut butter that had been sitting in our cupboards was safe to feed my four-year-old son. I typed in the UPC code from the jar into the search bar on the page and discovered that it was not part of the recall. That was great—easy and quick. And Leo got his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Here at the Sunlight Foundation, we’re often critical of the government’s forays into internet communication. But this is an occasion for praise. In the weeks since the salmonella outbreak occurred, sickening at least 550 people in 43 states and contributing to eight deaths, the FDA has harnessed the internet and social media to get the word out to consumers.
The main agency web page about the outbreak summarizes the situation, gives helpful health information and provides links to congressional investigations and testimony. A “widget” that allows people to paste a recall search box on their web pages was used 1.4 million times in nine days, and the website itself was searched 20 million times. The FDA also made use of twitter (@FDArecalls), blogs, mobile alerts, and online videos to alert the public about the danger.
The FDA also offers a feed of the recall information in a variety of formats—the underlying raw, structured data on which products are affected by the outbreak—so that inventive programmers can mash it up with other information should inspiration strike. Over at the blog “Development in a Blink,” Doug Finke took the information and ran it through a social mapping program to come up with this visualization on the relationships among the companies and brands involved in the recall.
There’s certainly more the agency could do. For example, it could create a way that people could text the name of a product to them from their cell phones and receive back a text saying whether the item is affected by the recall or not.
And there’s another long investigation to be told in how we’re in this salmonella mess in the first place. The food processing industry has long lobbied against giving the FDA stronger authority to regulate food safety, contributing $11.5 million in the 2008 federal elections alone and spending $29 million on lobbying last year. But with the salmonella crisis upon us, we commend the FDA for taking advantage of what the internet can offer in getting the word out.
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FBI Raids Murtha Linked Defense Firm
The FBI and the IRS raided a defense contractor heavily linked to Rep. John Murtha as part of an ongoing investigation headed by the Inspector General of the Defense Department. The firms raided are Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems, both owned and operated by Ron and Bill Kuchera. The firms do a large amount of business with the Defense Department and with larger defense firms with government contracts, such as Raytheon and Northrup Grumman. Murtha is closely tied to the firms, having provided millions in earmarks, and the Kuchera brothers, whose personal residences and Bill Kuchera’s game preserve were also raided.
Since 2002, employees of Kuchera firms have provided $60,600 in campaign contributions to John Murtha and his political action committee. Over those same years, Murtha has provided the firms with an immense amount of help from his position as ranking member and then chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In 2008, one of the few years in which earmarks were mandated to be disclosed, Murtha earmarked $8.2 million to the Kuchera firms. The Washington Post previously reported that Bill Kuchera was one of many defense contractors and lobbyists who sat on the board of a Murtha-linked nonprofit.
There has so far been no indication that Murtha is involved in the investigation. WJAC-TV in Johnstown, PA, reported that the purview of the Defense Department’s Inspector General covers “fraud crimes in which the government was either a part to or a victim of.”
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Home Builders Seek Bailout Pie
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Home Builders lobby is ramping up their campaign for a section of the bailout pie.
Struggling U.S. auto makers left Washington empty-handed after weeks of pleading for a handout, but that hasn’t deterred home builders from stepping up to lobby Congress for help.
But any federal assistance would require policy makers to figure out how to stimulate demand for housing — the problem at the root of the global financial meltdown — without artificially propping up home values.
The builders’ lobby is ramping up its sales pitch for a $250 billion stimulus package called “Fix Housing First,” arguing that financial markets won’t recover until home prices stop falling. They are calling for a generous tax credit for home purchases and a federal subsidy that would lower a homeowner’s mortgage rate.
The Home Builders should be relatively welcome on Capitol Hill, their PAC, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), has spread around $1.7 million in contributions over the past two years. As has been explained before, PAC contributions are integral to formulating a working relationship with Congress. In fact, they appear a vital tool in obtaining bailout bucks. Total contributions from the Home Builder industry reach to $9.15 million for 2008.
Here’s a list of the top recipients of Home Builder dough in the House:
2008 Home Builder Contributions to the House Buchanan, Vernon (R-FL) $97,500 Neal, Richard E (D-MA) $38,900 Costa, Jim (D-CA) $37,298 Cantor, Eric (R-VA) $36,600 LaTourette, Steven C (R-OH) $32,800 Wolf, Frank R (R-VA) $32,300 Turner, Michael R (R-OH) $26,550 Neugebauer, Randy (R-TX) $25,450 Nunes, Devin Gerald (R-CA) $24,400 Klein, Ron (D-FL) $24,150 Tiberi, Patrick J (R-OH) $23,998 Paul, Ron (R-TX) $23,845 Davis, Geoff (R-KY) $23,750 Kirk, Mark (R-IL) $23,700 Mahoney, Tim (D-FL) $22,750 Feeney, Tom (R-FL) $22,500 Castle, Michael N (R-DE) $22,371 Pastor, Ed (D-AZ) $21,400 Chabot, Steve (R-OH) $21,300 Donnelly, Joe (D-IN) $21,300 Contributions in the Senate look like this:
2008 Home Builder Contributions to the Senate McCain, John (R) $489,238 Obama, Barack (D) $219,128 Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $198,229 Cornyn, John (R-TX) $57,050 Reed, Jack (D-RI) $56,200 McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $51,550 Coleman, Norm (R-MN) $49,800 Reid, Harry (D-NV) $44,100 Dole, Elizabeth (R-NC) $40,000 Sununu, John E (R-NH) $38,100 Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA) $37,450 Collins, Susan M (R-ME) $37,150 Graham, Lindsey (R-SC) $31,950 Biden, Joseph R Jr (D-DE) $30,900 Alexander, Lamar (R-TN) $28,000 Martinez, Mel (R-FL) $26,250 Lautenberg, Frank R (D-NJ) $19,950 Roberts, Pat (R-KS) $19,500 Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX) $19,100 Specter, Arlen (R-PA) $18,600 The “Fix Housing First” campaign doesn’t end with the Home Builder industry – as represented in Washington by the NAHB. The lobbying campaign’s web site lists some other serious lobbying power houses as supporters including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Business Roundtable. For the year of 2008, the Home Builder industry, NAM, and the Business Roundtable have spent a combined $19.76 million on lobbying in Washington.
(All totals are based on data culled from Open Secrets.)
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Bailout Lobbying, Grassroots, and PACs
If ever there was a doubt that campaign contributions effect the votes of lawmakers, look no further than today’s Op-Ed from Amy Showalter in Roll Call. Showalter is the President of the Showalter Group, providing advice to corporations and trade associations on how to leverage grassroots pressure and PAC contributions in their lobbying efforts. Showalter’s Op-Ed attempts to reveal why certain lawmakers changed their votes on the recent bailout legislation. In doing so, Showalter winds up higlighting the seedy behavior of feeding campaign contributions to lawmakers in exhange for votes and the stealth nature of grassroots lobbying. On PAC contributions she writes:
Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), who faced one of the toughest re-election fights in the House, told the Associated Press that he changed his mind after he received telephone calls from General Motors Corp. chief executive officer G. Richard Wagoner Jr. and other auto and corporate executives. “I’ve never talked to as many bank presidents in my life, over my entire life,” he said.
Knollenberg has received $131,500 from GM since he started serving in Congress in 1993, according to Federal Election Commission records, illustrating another “predictor of influence success.” Our survey showed that giving a legislator the maximum allowable political action committee contribution is a predictor of persuasion success.
Lobbyists representing the housing, financial, auto and other business sectors pushed hard for the bailout bill. Several of the lawmakers who changed their minds have received campaign contributions from those industry PACs.
Schmidt has received $70,100 from American Financial Group Inc., a Cincinnati-based insurance holding company, and $16,500 from the American Bankers Association since she was elected to Congress in 1989.
Rep. Judy Biggert (R) was the only Illinois lawmaker to change her mind about the bailout package. Since she began representing her suburban Chicago district in 1989, she has received $45,000 from the National Association of Realtors, $39,500 from the National Automobile Dealers Association and $37,548 from the ABA.
Most lawmakers say they aren’t influenced by campaign contributions, but the recent bailout votes suggest otherwise. We found that the most successful influence attempts typically include campaign contributions. In other words, a PAC contribution represents “exchange” and cements relationships.
While campaign contributions do have to be disclosed to the public, they are only disclosed in quarterly filing reports. This prevents the type of real-time oversight that could be occuring if these “exchanges” were made available to the public as they happened.
Showalter also emphasizes the need for lawmakers to here from “key influentials” in their district. These are often business leaders or small business owners who can be engaged in a grassroots lobbying campaign organized by trade associations. After the initial failure of the bailout bill in Congress, the business community, along with AARP, began a huge grassroots campaign to get business owners to call their congressmen and senators to push for passage of the bill. That grassroots push provided the many examples that Showalter uses in her Op-Ed to show the importance of constituent communications and likely pushed the bill to its ultimate, overwhelming success.
While coalitions that often engage in this type of manufactured grassroots pressure are required to disclose their activities under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the actual effort of grassroots lobbying is still left untouched by disclosure requirements. In the world according to Showalter, a pro at influencing lawmakers, the best ways to get to a lawmaker’s heart are still through means not fully policed by disclosure laws.
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D.C., VA Top Campaign Contributors
Update: Please see Ellen’s comment in the comment thread for a clarification of these numbers.
MAPLight.org’s excellent study on in-state vs. out-of-state contributions to congressional candidates provides so many great points of data. The Blog of the Legal Times (BLT) looks at the zip codes with the highest amount of giving to political candidates. No surprise here:
1. Washington, D.C. 20005, with $28.9 million raised (map)
2. Washington, D.C. 20001, with $27.5 million raised (map)
3. Washington, D.C. 20036, with $27.5 million raised (map)
4. Washington, D.C. 20006, with $21.8 million raised (map)
5. Washington, D.C. 20004, with $17.8 million raised (map)
6. Alexandria, Va. 22314, with $12.2 million raised
7. Washington, D.C. 20007 with $5.8 million raised (map)
8. Chicago, Ill. 60611 with $5.3 million raised
9. McLean, Va. 22102 with $5.2 million raised
10. Arlington, Va. 22209 with $5.2 million raisedAll but one of these Washington, D.C. zip codes include parts of K Street, the chief lobbying corridor in the capital city. Arlington and McLean are part of a few of the richest counties in the entire country (McLean is in Fairfax County, the absolute richest county in the U.S.) These two Virginia locales are populated with pundits, lobbyists, defense contractors, lobbyists, and lobbyists.
And just in case there were any illusions left about campaign contributions and influence in Congress, take a look at this post from the blog of the law firm Womble Carlyle:
In the October 1 Political GPS we discussed the brave new world of regulation that has been ushered in by the current economic crisis. And from what we can see, “Joe the Hedge Fund Manager” should have as many concerns as “Joe the Plumber.” In short, the financial services industry will need to shift its government relations and PAC efforts into overdrive in order to outrun the regulatory tsunami headed its way.
Which plays nicely into the Washingtonian’s list of winners and losers in Washington over the collapse of the financial industry. Guess who the number one winners are: lobbyists and law firms!
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In Broad Daylight: The Banks Bought Congress
Budgeting political risk helped Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies avoid the kind of scrutiny they needed from Congress for the past several years. Millions of dollars in private travel, campaign contributions, and lobbyists-galore created a border wall that no regulation or reform could climb over. Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney’s hole gets deeper as a 2nd affair is revealed, the FBI opens and investigation, and the Democrats ditch him. There’s more in this round-up of today’s news:
Dave Jamieson at The New Republic looks into the lavish treatment members and staffers of the House Financial Services Committee received from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies in the years preceeding the collapse of the industry. Former chairman Mike Oxley, who now works for NASDAQ and as a lobbyist, approved a half-million dollars worth of privately paid travel, much of it offered by financial services companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had approximately one lobbyist for each member of the 70 person committee. Campaign contributions were spread around like butter on cornbread. Of course, all of this largesse eventually lured numerous staffers and committee members into the private sector and Jamieson names names:
Former Oxley adviser Carter McDowell moved on to the American Bankers Association; Karen Lynch Calton, one-time counsel to the committee, has lobbied for the Consumer Bankers Association; Greg Zerzan, an aide to Oxley, eventually went to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Linda Dallas Rich, a committee adviser, headed to the New York Stock Exchange; longtime Oxley aide Clinton Jones hopped to Fannie for a spell, before returning to Congress to serve Bachus on the finance committee; and even though Baker had been a perennial foe to the GSEs, the congressman’s own former chief of staff, Duane Duncan, became a star on Fannie’s lobbying team.
Rep. Tim Mahoney is in a load more trouble after the Associated Press revealed another affair and ABC News, the team that broke this story, reported that the FBI is investigating the allegations of hush money paid to the first reported mistress. It is alleged that Mahoney hired Patricia Allen, the first reported mistress, to both his campaign and congressional staffs. After things went sour (she discovered he was having another affair) Mahoney fired her and allegedly paid her $121,000 to keep her from filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics committee investigation (although those haven’t really led to anything since, I don’t know, the 1990s) and House Democrats effectively abandoned the freshman Florida congressman to fend for himself in a difficult district.
The defense team in Sen. Ted Stevens’ trial for filing false statements on his personal financial disclosure forms is attempting to show that the home renovations at the center of the charges were done for VECO’s Bill Allen and not for Stevens. Stevens’ daughter, Susan Stevens Covich, testified that when she appeared at her father’s Girdwood, Alaska home to spend time while visiting Allen was present in numerous other people, often taking up all five available bedrooms leaving her to sleep on the couch. Covich said she stopped staying there after Allen’s constant presence became “creepy“. Previously, defense attorneys have shown that Stevens spends most of his time living in Washington, DC and not at the home in Girdwood. The judge presiding over the case stated that the case will likely be handed to the jury next week.
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Around the Corner, September Legislative Agenda
Birds of a feather flock together. On Monday, our nation’s legislators will return, on winged flight, to finish up the year’s legislative work in less than 30 days. The bills of most pertinent attention will likely be appropriations bills, defense authorization, and, if necessary, a continuing resolution. The Senate Democrats just released an e-mail describing their September legislative agenda and groups are lining up to fight over a number of bills. Below, I’m going to take a quick look at the influence game around three of the bills that will surely get a vote in the next three weeks.
There are three bills outside of appropriations and military authorization that will come up in September. These include S. 3268, a bill to restrain energy speculation markets; S. 3186, a bill to provide low income heating assistance; and H.R. 1338, a bill to end gender discrimination in workplace pay. Using MAPLight.org’s listing of supporting and opposing interest groups and Open Secrets’ campaign contribution and lobbying data I have created some graphs showing the level of money groups are pumping into these two influence channels, and which side is spending more.
[Update: I only used 2008 data for these numbers. Campaign finance data at Open Secrets is updated through the second quarter filing period, which covers contributions up to June 30, 2008. Lobbyist disclosures also go through the second quarter filing covering spending up to June 30, 2008.]
S. 3268 — Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008
Lobbying Expenses Campaign Contributions Supports $73,134,053 $21,380,743 Opposes $46,477,562 $101,408,193 
S. 3186 — Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act
Lobbying Expenses Campaign Contributions Supports $207,309,920 $86,470,652 Opposes $45,896,810 $1,431,898 
H.R. 1338 — Paycheck Fairness Act
Lobbying Expenses Campaign Contributions Supports $44,485,392 $56,076,024 Opposes $103,493,162 $28,316,738 
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Bundlers Galore
Three makes a trend, right? Today, there are three news stories on presidential bundlers – campaign contributors who solicit money from other contributors and bundle it together – and their activities. All of these stories highlight the need for bundling disclosure rules from the Federal Election Commission. But two of these stories pinpoint the potential for abuse in the bundling system.
The Washington Post looks at the odd practices of one Harry Sargent III, the owner of an oil trading company with billion dollar defense contracts. Sargent has raised over $50,000 for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid from a collection of Arab-Americans who refuse to discuss why they gave money to the Republican’s campaign: (Continue reading…)
