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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Digital Democracy Contest
Today we’re excited to launch the Digital Democracy Contest — a free web-based game for high school social studies classes.
Students learn how to use OpenSecrets.org and OpenCongress.org. Then they compete in teams to answer questions like:
- How much money did the pharmaceutical industry contribute to Congressional candidates since 1990? [Answer: $94,601,549]
- How often does Senator Hagan vote with her party? [Answer: 87%]
- Which Representative sponsored H.J.Res.5? [Answer: Serrano]
Once students learn how to investigate Congress they reflect upon technology’s influence on government using this worksheet (pdf). If the teacher wishes, students can then complete original research tasks using Transparency Corps. Once vetted by other students this research will go on the OpenCongress wiki.
The Sunlight Foundation works to make our government more transparent, but putting government data online is just the first step. Citizens must be able to use this data. Projects like the Digital Democracy Contest help close the loop.
The Digital Democracy Contest was created by the students behind GNIC.org in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation. The contest is funded by a MacArthur Young Innovator award and based upon a college contest.
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Colbert, Open Secrets, Open Data, and Visualizations
Two nights ago, in his The Word segment, Steven Colbert actually used his show to do some investigative work into the money-in-politics connections that might have motivated to turn Rep. Luis Gutierrez’ position on pay-day loans from oppose to support slight (read: non-existent) restrictions. Watch it:
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c The Word – Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest Of course, I can’t help but remind readers that the Center for Responsive Politics recently opened up their data–20 years worth–to be mashed, mixed, and visualized. Already we are seeing visualization pop up. Check out these from the University of Michigan.
Also, Sunlight’s Chief Evangelist Greg Elin penned a guest column over at ProgrammableWeb about the release of this mountain of data. It’s well worth the read.
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Vote Correlations Back to 1999
Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, has written a great post about the last time Congress took a serious look at how to regulate the financial industry. To paraphrase:
In 1999, as a result of that debate, Congress removed Depression-era restrictions on banks from growing too big and taking unwarranted risks. CRP’s analysis shows how campaign contributions from financial institutions almost assuredly influenced the votes of members of Congress…Many of whom are the same politicians now trying desperately to save the financial sector from a meltdown not seen since the 1930s. During the debate nine years ago, the financial sector gave twice as much cash to those members who voted for the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act after its lead sponsors, than they did to those who opposed the bill, according to CRP. Until the shocking events of the past couple weeks, it was assumed that these financial institutions were “too big to fail.” But it was the 1999 legislation that freed them from federal regulations, allowing them to grow so large and to take on such risks.
Congress’ vote margin on Gramm-Leach-Bliley was not close, with 450 of the members of both chambers voting for it and only 64 voting against. The measure had bipartisan support. And small wonder…Financial sector interests gave more than $86 billion to members of Congress in the three-year run up to the November 1999 vote on the bill. Those members who supported the bill received about $180,000 in cash on average from financial sources over those three years. Those members who opposed the bill received about half that amount on average.
There was little difference in the money collected by Republicans who supported the bill and those who opposed it; the 255 GOP supporters collected an average of $179,175, while the opponents in their ranks-and there were only five of them-collected $171,890. On the Democratic side, however, there was a wide gulf, as the graph indicates. The 195 Democrats who supported the Financial Services Modernization Act had received an average of $179,920 in the two years and 10 months leading up to its passage, while the 59 Democrats who opposed it received just $83,475.
Nine years ago, lobbyists for the financial sector succeeded at enticing Congress to do the bidding of their financial clients resulting in exposing the American taxpayer to huge risk. Those same lobbies are now feverishly working many of the same politicians to cover their clients’ collective tails and handing the astronomical bill to each of us. “Whether campaign contributions will again correlate to congressional votes remains to be seen,” Massie writes. I would wager that there is unlikely to be much speculation on that question.
Be sure to check out CRP’s charts that accompany the post including one that lists the financial sector contributions to Congress since 1989. And look at Bill Allison’s work that looks at career totals of current lawmakers from the securities sector
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Check the Bulletin Board for Lobbyist Info
GOOD Magazine has a knack for taking political stories or data and turning them into to clever images. In this case, they’ve taken lobbying data from Open Secrets and turned it into something of a middle school bulletin board (this also may work as it’s own form of commentary in equating Congress with a middle school).
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Washington’s Revolving Door
The American News Project has a nice piece today on the revolving door problem in Congress, using as an example the recently announced retirement of defeated-in-the primaries Rep. Al Wynn. There are literally thousands — if not tens of thousands – of such stories buried here in the Center for Responsive Politics Revolving Door Database.
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Financial Holdings of Spouses
The Center for Responsive Politics has a nice post that digs deeply into that treasure trove known as the Personal Financial Disclosure forms of members of Congress.
Forty-six husbands and wives of Congress members reported owning stock in 2006 in companies that have a vested interest in their spouses’ committees, worth a total of $27.3 million to $46.7 million, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The list includes spouses who own stock in Lockheed Martin while the lawmaker sits on the House Armed Services Committee; or are invested in food giant SYSCO while the lawmaker is a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry Committee; or own shares of Exxon Mobil while married to a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee…
In 2006, the most recent year for which CRP has been able to analyze personal financial disclosure data, the spouses of Democratic lawmakers had more invested in companies related to their committees (worth at least $23.2 million) than the lawmakers themselves did (worth at least $5.5 million). The spouses of Republican lawmakers, by contrast, had less money invested in companies related to these committees (worth at least $4.1 million) than the lawmakers themselves (worth at least $39 million).
Overall, 304 congressional husbands and wives whose finances were reported on their spouses’ forms were worth between $698.8 million and $1.3 billion from their stocks, corporate bonds and other investments in 2006. (Assets and liabilities are disclosed in ranges on these forms, making it impossible to calculate net worth precisely.) The most popular spousal assets overall included General Electric, drugmaker Pfizer and Bank of America.
In at least 61 cases, the husbands and wives of Congress had investment portfolios worth significantly more than the lawmaker’s. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, for example, reported assets worth no more than $15,000, while her husband, Paul, an investor, had between $16.2 million and $57.8 million in assets. Spouses also bring with them their mortgages, school loans and other liabilities, however. For Paul Pelosi, this could mean up to $10.3 million in debt, more than any other lawmaker’s spouse.
Really interesting stuff.
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What the MSM in Learning About MOC
In Paul’s roundup this morning he mentions several of the reports that came from the release earlier this week of the PFDs – personal financial disclosure forms – filed by House and Senate members that profile their personal financial interests — stocks, mutual funds, IRA assets and other holdings and liabilities.
Newspapers and other media outlets all across the country have dug into the reports and are highlighting nuggets they’ve found about the finances of their local congressional delegation. For instance, The Boston Globe found that “six of the 10 House members from Massachusetts are landlords who made thousands of dollars last year on rental properties.” The Washington Post found a clue as to why former Rep. Al Wynn resigned his seat to take a position with a K Street lobbying firm whose “partners on average make slightly more than $1 million a year”…He needs the money. And then there is Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who decided apparently that she does not need the money. The Kansas City Star reports on her walking away from $1 million dollars, having past a deadline last week to pay off the loan she made to her 2004 gubernatorial campaign. As her report indicates, she is one of the more wealthy members of Congress, so much so that she won’t likely miss the fortune she’s walked away from. And The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Washington bureau chief, Stephen Koff, got especially creative in his review of the reports. He was able to get independent professional financial advisers to look at and comment on the reports of each member of Northeast Ohio’s congressional delegation. The financial advisors have some interesting advice on what financial strategies the lawmakers have employed in managing their own money. Quite clever.
