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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Sweeten it, but don’t read it
After passing the cap and trade bill in rush, we are beginning to see what was included in the last hours prior to the vote. According to the Washington Times, the final 300 page amendment to the 1,200 page bill appears to have been filled with sweeteners for wavering congressmen.
The Washington Times reported on the actual contents of the cap and trade manager’s amendment — those 300 pages that dropped at the last second — and found a sweetener for one lawmaker likely aimed at enticing her to vote for the bill. The bill contained a nearly unintelligable section creating a federally authorized power administration with $3.5 billion in funds to distribute to renewable energy and development projects in Ohio. The power administration was championed by Rep. Marcy Kaptur and its last minute inclusion likely helped obtain her vote and other wavering lawmakers from Ohio.
We have little idea how many sweeteners were added into the 300 page manager’s amendment and it is very difficult to determine due to the obscure language used in the amendment. Take, for example, the language of the Kaptur power administration:
SEC. 199. DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION FOR RENEWABLE
POWER BORROWING AUTHORITY.
(a) DETERMINATION.—No later than 6 months after
the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Energy,
in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce, shall—(1) determine any geographic area within the
contiguous United States that lacks a Federal power
marketing agency;
(2) develop a plan or criteria for the geographic
areas identified in paragraph (1) regarding invest-
ment in renewable energy and associated infrastruc-
ture within an area identified in paragraph (1); and
(3) identify any Federal agency within an area
in paragraph (1) that has, or could develop, the abil-
ity to facilitate the investment in paragraph (2).(b) REPORT.—The Secretary of Energy, in coordina-
tion with the Secretary of Commerce, shall provide the de-
terminations made under subsection (a) to the Committee
on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representa-
tives.
(c) ESTABLISHMENT.—Based upon the determina-
tions made pursuant to subsection (a), the Secretary of
Energy, in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce,
shall recommend to the Committee on Energy and Com-
merce of the House of Representatives the establishment
of any new Federal lending authority, including authoriza-
tion of additional lending authority for existing Federal
agencies, not to exceed $3,500,000,000 per geographic
area identified in subsection (a)(1).(d) AUTHORIZATION.—$25,000,000 is authorized to
be appropriated for fiscal year 2010 to carry out the provi-
sions of this section.Now for those looking to see how the last minute changes affect voting behavior, this kind of language isn’t helpful at all. There are even more obscure sections of the bill that could contain vote-getting sweeteners. Not that I’m advocating for plain language bills or anything (laws are written in legal language for a reason), but the language in this amendment is particularly — and likely intentionally — obtuse.
Of course, one of the biggest problems is that we were given under 24 hours to read these 300 pages of obscure language. So, we are brought reporting after the bill is passed teasing out the actual contents, which appear to include vote-attracting sweeteners. No one could have realistically known what was in the bill, and inserted for whom, before the vote took place.
If you want to see if you can find these sweeteners, please have at it. I spent a good amount of time reading the bill last week (what a concept) and wouldn’t mind some help pulling out the choice sections that were inserted to gain specific votes. Here’s the pdf. Let me know what you find in the comments. And don’t forget to tell your congressman to Read the Bill in the future.
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This Week in Transparency – July 2, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:
Last Friday evening’s June 26th program, CNN’s Lou Dobbs broadcasted a piece by correspondent Louise Schiavone about the Cap and Trade Energy Bill that the House of Representatives was to vote on and pass later that evening. Schiavone interviewed Jake Brewer, Sunlight’s engagement director, who said, “This is the kind of bill that’s going to affect our economy on a massive scale, our climate, our national security, and is not the kind of thing to be taken lightly. The opacity of this process is — to be perfectly honest, it’s infuriating.” Schiavone then stated erroneously that Sunlight opposed the bill. For the record, Sunlight has no position on the content of the bill itself, but advocates for the Congress to put all non-emergency legislation online for 72 hours before voting on it. The transcript can be read here, and the video is below.
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Increasing Legislative Transparency: Read the Bill and Beyond
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed the cap and trade bill after an incredibly messy process left little time for congressmen and the public to digest the final version of the bill. I think that process taught us a lot about how Congress mangles procedure, but also, in some ways, how Congress is trying to be more transparent, but not quite getting it right.
Looking back at what happened with cap and trade, we see that Congress, inexplicably, released a new version of the bill on a Monday evening before a Friday vote, with an explanation that this would not be the final version. This bill, the printed version, did not have a bill number written into the header, instead it look like this: H.R. ____.
This what we’d call a discussion draft, and it’s something that we’ve been seeing Congress release a lot more lately — likely due to pressure to make their operations more transparent. The managers of the cap and trade bill could have easily not released this discussion draft and dropped the whole new bill on Thursday or Friday. Instead, they released part of the bill on Monday and then 300 more pages on Thursday night. It’s great that Congress is releasing discussion drafts. They increase the ability of the public to peek inside to internal debates as they occur and hopefully have a say in the process. However, the time to publish discussion drafts is not the week a bill is being voted on, it’s when the bill is still being formed in a location with necessary transparency rules, like a committee hearing.
So this brings up an important point: when is the best time to read the bill? In many respects there needs to be a rule requiring bills to be posted online 72 hours prior to consideration for lawmakers and the public to know what is in the bill. But that isn’t the best period for citizen engagement in the legislative process outside of telling your congressman to vote “yea” or “nay”. The real sausage making happens in committees and we are seeing efforts by committees to release discussion drafts and versions of bills that they are working on. This is where discussion drafts are useful — not in final moments before consideration occurs.
Let’s run down areas in the legislative process where citizen engagement can have an impact and what Congress ought to be doing to increase transparency and provide a window for engagement:
1) Committee process – Where the real work gets done. Release of discussion drafts, manager’s statements, chairman’s mark would allow for much greater engagement by citizens in the process and would help other lawmakers and their staff familiarize themselves with the process that created legislation.
2) Prior to consideration – Pass a 72 hour rule so that all bills must be made publicly available online for 72 hours before consideration. While there is less chance for direct input by citizens this allows for organization in favor or in opposition of both the bill and proposed amendments to the bill. This also provides time for lawmakers and their staff to read the bill.
3) Post passage – This would be the area covered by President Obama’s five day bill posting pledge. I don’t think there is too much value here as the President likely already knows whether he will sign or veto a given piece of legislation. More transparency theater than anything else.
The next big debate in Congress will be around health care. Hopefully, Congress doesn’t only provide adequate time prior to consideration for the public to read the bill, but also continues to make efforts to provide drafts to the public during the committee process.
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This Week In Transparency – June 26, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:
CNN interviewed Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, in an article on lobbyists and the need for disclosure of their interactions with congressional lawmakers and other federal officials.
Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times reported on the fact that, five months into his administration, President Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited the five days, as he promised during his election campaign. She noted how open government and other watchdog groups have criticized the president for not living up to his pledge. Seelye quotes Ellen as saying it’s less important for the president to wait before signing a bill than it is for the Congress to wait 72 hours before voting on it. “There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless.” The article also has an accompanying video.
Politico’s Victoria McGrane reported on how the Senate is considering putting all their office expenses — including staff salaries — online, as well as requiring campaign fundraising reports to be published on the Web. The mere fact that the Senate leadership has conducted a whip count is an encouraging sign for the reforms’ passage, McGrane writes. And she quotes Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s , “They wouldn’t be talking about bringing it up for a vote if it wasn’t pretty solid.”
The Washington Examiner reports on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington calling on the Obama administration to release the names of health care executives who have visited the White House. “If you are going to criticize other people for secrecy, you better have an open door,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “They talk about transparency more than they exhibit it.”
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300 Pages Out of Thin Air
Today is the day that the House plans to vote on the cap and trade bill that has mysteriously changed this week. Last night, the bill changed again. We are now looking at an additional 300-pages that will be considered as amending H.R. 2998, the replacement bill of origins unknown. This is what the House Rules Committee tells us:
[I]n lieu of the amendment recommended by the Committee on Energy and Commerce now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of H.R. 2998, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted.
This means that H.R. 2998, which will be considered as an amendment in the form of a substitute, will include an additional 300 pages approved by the Rules Committee that will not be voted on. Let me see if I can run this down quickly and succinctly:
- The original bill, H.R. 2454, approximately 1,000 pages, was reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
- It was replaced this week by H.R. 2998, 1,201 pages, which will be voted on as an amendment in the form of a substitute.
- The Rules Committee, last night, released a committee report that includes a 300-page amendment to H.R. 2998. This 300-page amendment, the Waxman amendment (#121), is considered as adopted upon an affirmative vote for H.R. 2998, the amendment in the form of the substitute.
This means that we are looking at 300 extra pages added to the bill overnight. Stay tuned for more and go to ReadTheBill.org to tell your congressman that we need time to read the bills.
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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.
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What the frak is going on with the Cap and Trade bill?
There is currently some wacky legislative maneuvering going on with H.R. 2454, the cap and trade energy bill, that puts a serious spotlight on the failure of Congress to make bills properly available. According to the New York Times:
House Democratic leaders late last night released a revamped, 1,201-page energy and global warming bill (pdf), clearing the way for floor debate Friday even though it remains uncertain if they will have the votes to pass it.
The House bill posted on the Rules Committee Web site has grown from the 946-page version adopted last month in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources on and off Capitol Hill said the bulk of the changes largely reflect requests from the eight other committees that also had jurisdiction over the bill, including the Ways and Means Committee and Science and Technology Committee.
The bill is only available online at the House Rules Committee and is reported as “text of the bill to be introduced.” Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454, that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees, there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer — but it’s still being considered as H.R. 2454. Stay with me here.
Here’s the timeline:
Introduced – 5/15/09
Reported with amendments out of Energy & Commerce – 6/5/09
Discharged by Education & Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees – 6/5/09
Discharged by Financial Services, Science & Technology, Transportation, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Ways & Means Committees – 6/19/09
Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 90 – 6/19/09 (This version is 946 pages)
Submitted to House Rules Committee – 6/22/09, 4:22pm (This version is 1,201 pages)
So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.
This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.
And that isn’t even the worst part. This, apparently, isn’t even the final bill. The final bill will be a manager’s amendment that will be drafted later this week! From a posting on the House Rules Committee, we know that the deadline to submit amendments is Thursday at 9:30am. And there is talk that this will be voted on on Friday. Thus, the final version of this bill will likely only be available for less than 24 hours.
Sunlight has been advocating for all bills to be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration. It doesn’t look like that is going to happen here. If you think that Congress should read the bills they vote on, you can tell your congressman to both support the Read the Bill resolution, H. Res. 554, and to give the public enough time to read the final version of the cap and trade bill, whenever that is made available.
As Open Left’s Chris Bowers says about this process:
[Y]ou don’t get to know what is in the bill until it is too late. Further, you get no chances to improve the bill.
This is an unacceptable process and it needs to change.
