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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It Was A Very Good Year
Sunlight hasn’t been around nearly as long as that song — it was first recorded in 1961 and we opened our doors in May of 2006 — but for us 2009 was a very good year. We have you, an amazing staff and boards, and our generous investors to thank for that. Hardly a day went by when a new idea wasn’t hatched, tested or dumped, when a blog item wasn’t posted, when an idea for how to visualize data wasn’t tossed around. The best ideas survived and thrived in the creative, collaborative (and yes, sometimes chaotic) culture Sunlight has nurtured for the past 3 and a half years. We are excited about how far we have come and that we are poised for even bigger strides in the next decade.
A few highlights from this year from my point of view.
OpenCongress.org – our joint project with the Participatory Politics Foundation –launched its most comprehensive site redesign mid-year, improving usability of its tools and clarity of data presentation. In addition, it integrated new useful sources of data and feature sets to make it even easier for individuals and organizations to track and share the best info about their interests and, as result of the redesign and new features, and hot issues like health care and financial industry reform, OpenCongress has experienced its most-ever sustained traffic levels this year. In fact, in August 2009, shortly after the launch of the redesign, it appeared that OpenCongress became the most-visited government engagement Web site in the U.S., and perhaps in the world. And wait til next year — if you think OpenCongress is a useful site, imagine the same kind of web-based resources rolled out for your state in 2010 based on state legislative data.
Apps for America Contests. Sunlight held two very successful contests this year resulting in the creation of 100 new apps based on government data. (Yes, this data can actually be made interesting and useful for ordinary mortals.) These contests were hugely important to the development of a strong and engaged Sunlight Labs community and for demonstrating an interest in government data. The community exploded reaching over 1,200 participants. Check out some of the wonderful apps if you haven’t seen them already.
The Great American Hackathon was held on December 12-13 just before Sunlight took off for its well-deserved winter break. The Hackathon — run by our Labs team — was a decentralized event held at over 20 venues across the country and its purpose was simple — to get developers to meet each other and to work on new open source open government projects.
Transparency Corps. We launched Transparency Corps this year — Sunlight’s answer to the question we often are asked: ‘How can I help?’ We ran several campaigns on that platform and expect it to become even more active in ‘10. We parsed the Kentucky State Legislature manually, worked with Open New York, collected the number of votes each member of Congress received and ran two earmark-related campaigns. All in all, it resulted in a contribution of 662 volunteer hours for the Sunlight Foundation and 228 hours for partners, and the completion of 8,312 individual tasks. Wow!
Mobile Apps. In the last half of 2009 we developed apps for the iPhone and the Android. The Android app, ‘Congress’, has received over 2,000 downloads which is significant for the Android marketplace. The iPhone app, ‘Real Time Congress’ just received approval and we plan to formally launch it the first week of January, 2010 We also built an overlay of Recovery.gov data on the LayAR augmented reality mobile app. This move into the use of augmented reality to show the usefulness of online disclosure of government information has sparked the interest of many. Fairly obviously, expect lots more along these lines in the next year.
Congrelate. Sunlight Labs built Congrelate as a way for people to view, sort, filter and share data about members of Congress and their districts. The Labs compiled data from Congress, the Census, OpenSecrets.org, GovTrack and other sources to let users manipulate the data and see how they relate. Congrelate allows users to select what data they would like to see, add it to a ‘sheet’ then filter and sort through it easily. Congrelate will get renewed attention in 2010 with new data sets added and an improved UI.
Transparency Camps. Sunlight hosted two unconferences this year — one here in DC and one at Google HQ in Mountain View. Through events like this, and our Transparency Breakfasts and Transparency Happy Hours, Sunlight is helping to build new relationships that will hope will create and galvanize a transparency community. We hope you’ll join in these events as we plan more for the coming year.
House (and Senate) Expenditures Online. As a direct result of Sunlight’s suggestions, on November 30, the House published their expenditures reports online for the first time. Sunlight had long advocated for such a move, and devoted a section of our Transparency in Government Act (drafted in 2008) to the issue. (Senate reports will be forthcoming in 2010.) Sunlight quickly crafted an online database of the newly released information, since the House reports were released in a PDF document (boo…..) rather than a searchable database. (File this one under the category of ‘If Congress won’t do 21st century style transparency we’ll show them how to do it.’)Read the Bill. Technology makes it possible for anyone to review legislation before it’s considered and tell their representative what they think of it. In 2009 Sunlight began calling for posting all legislation online for 72 hours before its considered by either the House or the Senate. Now thanks to our efforts to heighten public awareness around this, Congress can no longer talk about a piece of major legislation without a reporter asking, ‘will the final version of the bill be online for 72 hours?’ Sunlight has helped to change the conversation and the way the public is thinking about transparency even when transparency laws or regulations have yet to pass. We’ll keep pushing this forward in ’10 to make sure that every bill is available on line before it’s considered by Congress.
Redesigning Government series. In 2009, Sunlight launched an ongoing ‘redesigning’ government series — making mock-up redesigns of GSA, FEC, EPA, FCC and Supreme Court sites, and others. This work resulted in many conversations with each of the agencies about their Web sites and how the agencies could improve the ways they make data available to the public. We even crowd-sourced testimony we presented to the Federal Election Commission with details for their consideration. We think that was first!
Real Time Investigations had an incredibly successful year, using Sunlight and grantee-sponsored tools to push the envelope of transparency, and using shoe leather reporting to find out what the data can tell us about who owes what to whom, how and on what government spends its money. Hundreds of investigative posts were made to the site. Sunlight’s Reporting Group wrote 11 major stories using data from the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker alone. This team was also responsible for training more than 1,250 journalists and bloggers in 2009 an activity that will pay off handsomely as more data comes on line. Next year expect to find many of these training resources online.
Party Time. Sunlight’s Party Time site now contains more than 6,700 fund-raising invitations and it has become a valuable resource for journalists, bloggers and advocacy groups. In particular, we saw an increase in outside groups using the data to do their own complex analysis. Everyone can follow the money after it’s raised, but only Sunlight gives you an introduction into real time political fund-raising.
The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker was launched this year, a joint project with ProPublica. The site digitized, for the first time, information from disclosures filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA, which requires lobbyists for foreign governments to reveal a wealth of information about their lobbying activities, including the dates and subjects of their contacts with members of Congress, their staffers and executive branch officials. The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker makes more than 13,000 records searchable by lobbyist, client, person contacted and issue raised. The site has been searched 163,104 times by media organizations, citizens and even congressional staff. We will continue this project into 2010 with ProPublica.
There was a lot more. Sunlight worked closely with the Administration to help move them in the right direction on the Open Government Directive and their lobby reform initiatives. We are happy to see our fingerprints in many aspects of what was announced by the White House in late December. So too, Sunlight worked with many players on the Hill to convince them to begin to open up Congressional information. We’ve begun to explore how transparency is practiced — or not — at the state level too. At the end of the year we were hard at work on several major legislative initiatives to be introduced in January of 2010 that would dramatically improve Congressional transparency.
None of the above speaks to the thousands of blog posts written at Sunlight, Sunlight Labs, Open Congress, Real Time Investigations, or on the Party Time websites, nor the stunning visualizations that accompanied and highlighted many of those posts (think ‘a picture is worth a 1,000 words’), nor the hours of conversations with elected officials, their staff and administration officials, as we all come to grips with how technology can change how we get access to information and what the public can do with it. Our work on SubsidyScope, the Pew Charitable Trust project for which we are building a database of government subsidies, garnered tremendous kudos for its design and ease of use as the first sectors were released. There are a number of soon to be released projects on which we spent hundreds of hours of development time this year – new tools that will make it easier for journalists, bloggers and citizens to make use of data in easily understandable ways.
2010 will be an incredible year for us. Lots of plans are underway. Some I’ve mentioned above, and Clay Johnson, Labs director detailed a number of them including figuring out how to handle the glut of data that government will make available under its Open Government Directive and how to enhance it with state and local government data too; mashing important ‘influence’ and ‘spending’ data sets together so it will be available with a single search; widgets to make following your lawmaker’s campaign contributions and earmarks (and other activities) very easy; launching a new major new campaign to drive public demand for more — more transparency, more data, and a more open government. And always on our list is making all this information more easily available for reporters, bloggers and online citizens like you. We’d love to have your ideas of what you’d find useful. Please leave them in the comment section below.
For all your support and help — and for the hard work of our grantees — we are most grateful. We welcome all your contributions — monetary and participatory. And we hope you will help us keep transparency priceless.
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Key Democrat in Health Care Talks Receives Large Health Industry Contributions in 2009
As the summer of the Democrats’ discontent winds to a close, the head count for health care reform in the Senate begins in earnest. One of the key Democratic senators on the fence is Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 election. Lincoln jumped into the news today with a quote to a reporter stating her opposition to a public option plan in a health care reform bill. “I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can’t afford that,” Lincoln said. The senior Arkansas senator is also the 2nd highest recipient of campaign contributions from the health industry among senators this year.According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lincoln has received $325,350 in contributions from the health industry, as of June 30. The large amount in contributions underlies a constantly shifting position by the senator on health care reform.
(Continue reading…)
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This Week in Transparency – August 28, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:
CQ Politics‘ Richard Rubin reports how House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.), already beset by a series of ethics investigations, recently disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets. Rubin notes that earlier this year, Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, found similar problems with Rangel’s previous disclosure reports. According to Bill’s analysis, Rangel failed to report purchases, sales or his ownership of assets at least 28 times since 1978 on his personal financial disclosure forms. Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appeared and disappeared with no disclosure of when they were acquired, how long they were held or when they were sold, as House rules require. “I understand being sloppy, missing an asset once or twice,” Bill said. “But what this shows is he doesn’t take financial disclosure seriously. How else can you year after year have these inaccuracies? It doesn’t look like there is a lot of care put it into compared to other members. It makes people suspicious when all of a sudden you double your wealth. Without knowing how a member accumulated that wealth, people are going to ask questions.” The New York Times‘ David Kocieniewski reported on Rangel’s discrepancies and quotes Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying the New York lawmaker’s haphazard approach to his finances had undermined his credibility in Congress. “Sloppy bookkeeping is not a valid excuse for a sophisticated member of Congress who is chairman of the committee that handles complex financial issues like the tax code,” she said. Glenn Reynolds, at his popular “Instapundit” blog, has followed the various Rangel stories and picks up on Bill’s Real Time Investigations post responding to the CQ Politics report.
Halimah Abdullah, with McClatchy Newspapers, reported on a study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity that found more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party’s Blue Dog Coalition received so far this year came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries. The report cites Center for Responsive Politics data to show how, on average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more. Abdullah used Party Time data to show how coalition members are raising campaign cash at fundraisers. McClatchy papers across the country ran the story.
Wired’s “Epicenter” blog highlighted the Apps for America 2 contest finalists. Government Computer News quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs’ director, discussing the finalists. (Continue reading…)
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What Was I Reading Today?
A Bloomberg attempt to pry open the Federal Reserve moved forwards this week as Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in favor of the FOIA request for certain documents related to the Fed’s emergency lending. The Project On Open Government (POGO) lays out the story behind the case and explains that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will have to answer questions about the Fed’s transparency when he faces the Senate for his renomination hearing.
While President Obama and Defense Secretary Bob Gates have laid out a moderately ambitious plan for defense acquisition reform, Mother Jones finds that lobbyist-turned-Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn is standing in the way of further changes.
Public Citizen used Sunlight’s Party Time data to show that no one is throwing for fundraisers than the banks bailed out by the federal government. The influence lives on.
In a mind-boggling ruling, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will allow Rep. Pete Visclosky, under investigation for potential earmarking abuses in PMA Group scandal, to use campaign funds to pay the legal fees of his staff — including former staff. This means that Rep. Visclosky can pay the legal fees of PMA lobbyist Rich Kaelin because he is a former Visclosky staffer. As Zach Roth writes at TPM Muckraker, this also means that Rep. John Murtha could potentially pay for the legal fees of Paul Magliocchetti, the founder of the PMA Group, as Magliocchetti is a former Murtha staffer. Now you know where your campaign contributions are going.
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This Week in Transparency – August 14, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:
Jonathan D. Salant and Lizzie O’Leary with Bloomberg.com have an article showing how there are six lobbyists attempting to influence the health care reform debate for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate. That figure is three times the number of lobbyists registered to lobby on defense. They used data from the Center for Responsive Politics to illustrate how every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is attempting to influence the debate on behalf of some interest or another, spending $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009 alone. They quote Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, “Whenever you have a big piece of legislation like this, it’s like ringing the dinner bell for K Street.” Multiple other outlets picked up the article and Bill’s quote, including Kate Barrett at ABC News. And David Schechter, CNN’s senior national editor, wrote a column about the lobbying feeding frenzy surrounding the health care reform debate. He lists Sunlight and OpenSecrets.org as good sources for information on the “lobbying largesse.”
In light of the increasingly heated debate over how to reform health care policy, Lisa Stone at BlogHer wrote about the new partnership between BlogHer and OpenCongress, the joint project between the Participatory Politics Foundation and Sunlight, to provide a forum to move the discourse in a more civil and positive direction. They have asked Nancy Watzman, Sunlight’s director of the Party Time project, to share her investigations on their site multiple times a week. Be sure to check their coverage out, which starts today.
Writing at Forbes, Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, wrote about what he calls the promise of innovation provided by Government 2.0. And he asked, “How does government itself become an open platform that allows people inside and outside government to innovate?” O’Reilly points to the Apps for America contests as an example of the “virtuous circle of citizen innovation” using the information made available through the White House’s Data.gov. PC World published a piece by Grant Gross with IDB News Service on how the contest is asking developer to use the raw data released on Data.gov and elsewhere to demonstrate the power of data-publishing and number-crunching services. Gross discussed with Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs’ director, about how the Labs works to assist traditional and citizen journalists with investigative reporting. “As the Obama administration begins to release more data, there aren’t enough fingers on keyboards here in Sunlight Labs to handle all this,” Clay said. “Has the Obama administration succeeded in making more government data available? You’re talking to the guy with the most unquenchable thirst for that, who will never say that they’re successful.” (Continue reading…)
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This Week in Transparency – August 7, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:
Alan Fram with the Associated Press wrote about how the health insurance industry is fighting to prevent the Congress from passing a health care overhaul that includes a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. Fram cites data from the Center for Responsive Politics to show how health insurers have made $41 million in campaign contributions to current congressional lawmakers since 1989, “with more than half going to lawmakers on the five House and Senate panels writing this year’s health bills.” Since the beginning of 2008, insurers have spent $145 million on lobbying.
The New York Times‘ Jack Rosenthal, in writing the paper’s “On Language” column, mentioned how Andrew Raseij, Sunlight’s senior technology advisor and co-director of Personal Democracy Forum, is pushing for a federal law that redefines “public” to mean searchable and readable online. U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.) is drafting just such legislation. Rosenthal also noted how the Senate does not disclose campaign-contribution information to the Federal Election Commission in an electronic form. “That means it must be digitized by the commission, by which time the next election may well have come and gone. Transparent? Yes, but also emasculated,” Rosenthal wrote.
Federal Computer Week’s Ben Bain wrote about how the Obama administration is asking federal agencies to gear their spending plans for science and technology in fiscal 2011 toward projects designed to drive economic growth, create energy independence, improve health, and bolster security, according to recently issued general guidance. Peter Orszag, Obama’s OMB director, outlined the new emphasis in an August 4th memo (PDF). Craig Jennings, a senior federal fiscal policy analyst with OMB Watch, said the memo is an indication that science and technology will be high priorities for the administration. (Continue reading…)
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Baucus Skips Fundraiser for His Glacier PAC, A Popular Place for Health Industry Contributions
This past weekend Sen. Max Baucus’ political action committee (PAC) hosted a three-day retreat fundraising event at the Big Sky Resort with “fly-fishing in three nearby rivers, golfing on an Arnold Palmer-designed course, horseback riding and hiking, family fun and gorgeous scenery.” The entrance fee for the event was $2,500 per individual and $5,000 for a PAC. While the roster of interest groups, lobbyists and other individuals in attendance is unknown at this time, we do know who was a no-show: Max Baucus.
According to the National Journal’s Under the Influence blog, Sen. Baucus announced his intention to avoid the event before the fundraiser commenced to “tend to faltering bipartisan negotiations over health care reform legislation.” The senator will not only be missing those who want his ear on a variety of issues coming before his powerful committee — cap and trade and health care — he’ll also be missing a protest held by advocates for single payer health care.
Despite missing this fundraiser, the Montana senator’s Glacier PAC has already pulled in large sums of money from the health and insurance sector and lobbyists representing both sectors. Since January, Baucus’ Glacier PAC has raised $99,500 from health and insurance PACs and lobbyists representing health and insurance organizations. This represents one-third of all contributions to Glacier PAC this year.
Many of these contributions were filed with his committee in the days soon after other fundraising weekends in the mountains of Montana. Over the weekend of February 6, Baucus hosted his Eigth Annual Ski and Snow Mobile Weekend, a fundraising weekend get-away much like the July 31-Aug 2 event that Baucus skipped. Contributions that were filed on February 16 include four health care PACs and two lobbyists for health care companies. The PACs included National Emergency Medicine PAC, Sanofi-Pasteur, American College of Cardiology and American College of Radiology Association. Three out of these four PACs contributed the maximum $5,000 with Sanofi-Pasteur contributing $2,500. The lobbyists included Tracy Spicer (Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Bravo Health, Healthcare Leadership Council, Heritage Services, Medco, National Health Policy Group, Travelers Companies, UnitedHealth Group) and William Oldaker (Adventist Health Systems, Healthcare Quality Strategies, Intermountain Health Care, Iowa Foundation for Medical Care, IPRO, Lumetra, Mpro, Ohio KePRO, Parexel International, TMF Health Quality Institute, West Virginia Medical Institute).
Contributors to Sen. Baucus’ Glacier PAC also include some of his former staffers now lobbying for health care organizations. These include former chief of staff David Castagnetti ($3,000), Nick Giordano ($1,000) and Roger Blauwet ($2,500). Castagnetti represents a wide array of health care companies including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), American College of Cardiologists, Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Proctor & Gamble and Merck. Blauwet represents Merck, Wyeth, Rx Benefits Coalition and the Association of Financial Guaranty Insurers. Giordano is listed in reports as representing Covidien, Health Care Service Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Corporation, Milliman Care Guidelines and the National Association of Public Hospitals. Many of these organizations have also made PAC contributions to the senator’s Glacier PAC.
While Sen. Baucus has promised not to accept any more contributions from health care PACs, he is still willing to accept contributions from their lobbyists and executives. It will be interesting to see who showed up at the senator’s big summer weekend getaway, even if the senator didn’t make it there himself.
Full list of health and insurance PAC and lobbyist contributions below: (Continue reading…)
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Did Two June Parties Yield $44,700 From Health PACs For Sen. Grassley?
Yesterday, I posted about the mountain of health and insurance PAC money pouring into the 2010 reelection coffers of Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the ever-important Senate Finance Committee. That money came into his account like a flooding river, but the real torrent of funds comes in the waning days of June. Could this be because of these two fundraisers held for Sen. Grassley on June 22 and June 24?
From June 22 to the end of the month Sen. Grassley raised a total of $44,700. During this time he was the beneficiary of two fundraisers, one held by the lobbyist for an alternative health organization that has lampooned reform efforts, whose invites can be found at Sunlight’s Party Time web site. Back in June, Nancy Watzman, at the helm of the Party Time blog, wrote about the June 24 event hosted by Sam Brunelli, lobbyist for the Whitaker Health Freedom Foundation:
Sam Brunelli, who works for the Whitaker Health Freedom Foundation, the political arm of the Freedom of Health Foundation, and his wife, Robin Read, are feting Grassley at a breakfast on June 24 at the Capitol Hill Club. The Foundation, headed by Dr. Julian Whitaker of dietary supplement fame, states it opposes the government and the pharmaceutical industry whenever they “suppress the truth about alternative medical therapies and/or nutritional supplementation.” Read is president and CEO of the Foundation for Women Legislators, which includes Dr. Whitaker on its board. The Freedom of Health Foundation did not return a call inquiring about the event.
Brunelli is introduced as a lobbyist on the organization’s Web site, here; however there are no official records of his work at least as a federal lobbyist here, according to lobbyist disclosure reports. The most recent available tax forms filed by the Whitaker Health Freedom Foundation, the political arm, claim a budget of just $34,000 and make no mention of payments to staff. (See the organization’s 1998 990 form here.)
Brunelli formerly served as executive director of the conservative group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which works to advance conservative state legislators. He left the group in 1995 over charges of mismanagement and personal enrichment, according to a 1995 National Journal report.
The majority of the contributions coming in during this high water mark for Sen. Grassley’s PAC fundraising came from health professional organizations, all of whom paid equal to or above the amount required for PACs to gain entrance to the fundraising parties on June 22 and June 24.
The amount raised over the final eight days in June accounts for over one-quarter of the health and insurance PAC money raised by Sen. Grassley in the second quarter. The other three quarters came over the course of 83 days. Knowing this, it appears that the two fundraisers had the desired effect.
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This Week in Transparency – July 31, 2009
Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:
National Journal’s Eliza Newlin Carney wrote about how the health care industry is unleashing big money as the health care debate in Congress intensifies. She notes the blog post from Paul Blumenthal, Sunlight’s senior writer, about how five of Sen. Max Baucus‘ (Mont.) former staff members now work for a total of 27 different organizations that either represent the health care or insurance industries, or have a vested interest in the debate. She also quotes Paul, “We thought it was important to show the public that the senators aren’t crafting the policy by themselves. They have all these other connections, through relationships, that have a huge stake in this legislation.” Trudy Lieberman with the Columbia Journalism Review also highlighted and linked to Paul’s post and the graphic he and Kerry Mitchell, Sunlight’s creative director, produced. The “study shows exactly what advocates of real and substantive health reform are up against,” Lieberman wrote, adding that Sunlight provides clarity on just who has the senator’s ear.
Speaking of Kerry’s graphic art skills, The New York Times‘ “First Look” blog includes one of his illustrations in a post highlighting great visualizations created by designers using the Times APIs that “both beautify and clarify information.” Kerry’s graphic illustrates the Times’ usage of the word “transparency” since 1990.
David Talbot at MIT’s Technology Review, in an article how volunteers are using the Web to help make the U.S. government more accountable, highlighted Transparency Corps. Talbot quoted Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, “Government puts out a ton of data that is really interesting about what it does, but people can’t understand it.” Transparency Corps launch roughly coincided with the launch earlier this month of the White House’s IT Dashboard, the administration’s effort to chart the progress of information-technology projects in various federal agencies. The article quotes Andrew Rasiej, Sunlight’s senior technology advisor and co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum, saying the dashboard may be just the tip of the iceberg heralding a new age of transparency regarding federal spending. “Once people get used to this type of information being so readily accessible, they will demand to see (it) for all other federal spending too, and then the genie will be completely out of the bottle.”
Dan Eggen at The Washington Post wrote how the debate about health-care reform has been a boon to the political fortunes of the 52 members of the Blue Dog Coalition, who have become key brokers in shaping legislation in the House. Eggan used Party Time data to show show U.S. Rep. Mike Ross (Ark.), a leader of the Blue Dogs, has had a steady schedule of fundraising events sponsored by the health industry or lobbying firms that represent health-care companies. Eggen used data from the Center for Responsive Politics that showed Ross had received nearly $1 million in contributions from the health-care sector and insurance industry during his five terms in Congress. On the topic of Party Time, be sure not to miss National Journal’s interview with Party Time’s director Nancy Watzman.
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Lunch Time Link Round-Up
Local county commissioners in the district of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence passed a resolution requesting that the congressman end his ban on earmarks. The President of Ball State University is also supporting the call for Pence to accept earmarks.
Rep. Darrell Issa is seeking more information on Countrywide’s VIP mortgage deals with lawmakers and political figures like Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad. Issa is trying to obtain eight years worth of documents relating to the “Friends of Angelo” program. Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, is currently facing multiple indictments brought by the federal government.
The trial of former Rep. William Jefferson is finally getting under way. In case you forgot, Jefferson was caught with $90,000 in cash in his freezer.
And over at Party Time, Nancy Watzman has a post on how a little sunlight can make lawmakers rethink how they fundraise. A common practice in fundraising letters is to list the committee memberships of the lawmaker raising money. For a fundraiser to aid Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic lobbyist Heather Podesta went a little over the line in her solicitation, aligning amounts of money with the committees Feinstein sits on. Feinstein wound up cancelling the fundraiser due to the appearance of impropriety.
