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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Research Request on Spousal Lobbying
Here’s an experiment occasioned by the excellent report by John Solomon of the Washington Post on spouses of members of Congress who lobby. Solomon identifies 6 lawmakers married to registered lobbyists (listed below). Is it possible, after reading the lobby disclosure reports that list these spouses (I’ve linked the results page in the Senate Office of Public Records page for each of them, making it easy to find the reports) to determine whether the member votes for the spouse’s clients’ interests?
Here’s the list, with links:
Sen. Byron Dorgan……….Kimberly Olson Dorgan here and here
Sen. Elizabeth Dole…………Robert J. Dole
Sen. Ted Stevens…………….Catherine A. Stevens
Sen. Kent Conrad……………Lucy Calautti
Rep. Roy Blunt……………….Abigail Blunt
Rep. Steven LaTourette……Jennifer LaTouretteThe Washington Post has a nice database of congressional votes which should prove helpful when lobbyists list particular bills….
Update: Here’s an example. This disclosure tells us that Catherine Stevens, the wife of Sen. Ted Stevens, lobbied on S. 2439, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2002, for a group called CuresNow, which, according to this (scroll to the bottom) seemed to support S. 2439:
7. Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) have joined together to sponsor S. 2439, the “Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2002.” The act would ban reproductive cloning to create children, but permit privately funded research involving somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), sometimes called therapeutic cloning. This legislation is widely supported among scientific, medical, and patient groups.
Stevens, incidentally, was not a cosponsor.
The bill was referred to the Senate Juciciary Committee, where it apparently died. At the time, Sen. Stevens was not a member of the Judiciary Committee, so it’s unlikely he had much of an effect on the bill.
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Tracking Local Politics
“All politics is local” goes the old saw, and the more time I’ve spent looking into members of Congress, the more I become persuaded that it’s mostly true, just as it’s also true that most political corruption is local as well. House members attend to their districts, Senators to their states, and they know the local movers and shakers quite well, and are more than willing to use their offices to keep those folks happy, even if their interests aren’t in the best interests of the country.
Those local relationships and the local issues they create are probably best understood by–well, locals. I know I learned more about the Prairie Parkway from people who lived in close proximity to the site than from The New York Times or The Washington Post. But finding those information-rich local sites isn’t always easy. So I’m really excited that Micah Sifry, one of Sunlight’s stellar consultants, offers seven smart ways to track down local political blogs. Want to find out if a blogger covers doings in Nancy Pelosi’s district? In Mitch McConnell’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky? Now there’s a way to find out!
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Still Exposing Earmarks
Michael Petrelis may be a little late to the exposing earmarks party that we at Sunlight were part of last summer, but he asks exactly the kinds of thoughtful questions that any constituent, as part of his citizen oversight duties, should get answered from a representative in Congress. Petrelis is asking them of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the soon-to-be House Speaker–it will be interesting to see how quickly, and thoroughly, she responds.
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Family Business — 3rd Update
The basic research is done, and before I begin making the earnest effort to digest the raw results, let me first thank all who participated–especially Beezling, who topped his prolific performance on round one with an incredible turn on round two–he did 319 this time around, doing by far the bulk of the entries. Get that man a fedora and a press pass!
More information soon…
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Family Business — Second Update
Nearly 7 p.m. Sunday, and we’re through 296 members and 41 states–pretty incredible. To all who’ve joined this effort, once again let me offer a heartfelt thank you.
Some preliminary numbers as we move toward the final leg, but first let me point out that these a). haven’t been verified and b). need to be looked at more closely to figure out what they mean. So keep those caveats in mind. Citizen journalists have tentatively identified $480,029 in campaign expenditures going from a House member’s campaign to a firms that employs that member’s spouse in the current election cycle. Citizen journalists have also tentatively found that organizations for which House members’ spouses work have landed a total of $2,788,663,441–that’s $2.7 billion–in federal contracts in 2005 (the last full year for which information is available) and $2,649,935,942–$2.6 billion–in federal grants in 2004 (again, the last year for which we have complete data).
What does this mean? I’m not sure. Maybe if you picked 296 names at random out of a phone book, you’d come up with similar figures for the companies they worked for. It’s the particulars here that count, and we’ll begin digging into them once we’re through phase one.
