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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A Brief History of Senate Reconciliation Votes
As Democrats move forward to pass health care reform attention has focused on a key piece of Senate rules known as budget reconciliation. This post takes Senate vote records covering 13 key reconciliation votes from 1990 to 2007 to show how senators in both parties voted–and how sitting senators voted in the past–on a variety of reconciliation bills.(Click on the image to the right for a full visualization of these reconciliation votes.)
Reconciliation is a legislative process in the Senate commonly used to pass legislation concerning spending, revenues or the debt-limit. The process has been used 22 times since 1974. More often than not, these bills have been vehicles for large reforms in the tax code, health care and other social programs from education to welfare. One key reason that reconciliation is used for major reforms is that the process is subject to different rules than other bills. Most importantly, reconciliation bills are not subject to cloture votes–the 60 vote supermajority procedure to overcome a filibuster–and thus only require a 50 vote majority to pass.
The voting record shows that reconciliation is often used as a way to pass otherwise contentious legislation that could not receive sufficient bipartisan support to reach the 60 vote supermajority necessary to clear a cloture vote. Seven of the thirteen reconciliation measures examined here passed between 1990 and 2007 were almost universally opposed by the minority party while gaining almost total unity in support from the majority using the reconciliation process.
These seven reconciliation bills include the following: (Continue reading…)
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Making Friends With a Senator
Senators are now allowed to have official Facebook pages, Roll Call ($) reported. I don’t yet have a copy of the “Dear Colleague” letter that announced the change, but the news report explains that Senatorial Facebook pages will be modified to follow rules prohibiting product endorsements, partisan material, and unrelated personal information. It’s good that Senators Schumer and Bennett were able to make this happen.
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Congress Should Make All Ethics Documents Available Online
An article in today’s Washington Post on the limits of conflict-of-interest rules laments that “the ethics system on Capitol Hill requires little more than annual public disclosure of financial assets and transactions.” When we surveyed the ethics filings required of U.S. Representatives and their staff members, we reached two additional conclusions:
(1) Many ethics filings are required to be publicly reported, but are not available online
(2) Many ethics filings are not publicly reported at all
At a minimum, the House should publish a compilation of reports and statements required by Members of Congress, officers, and employees, like the Senate does [PDF]. (Of course, the Senate should publish their compilation online. See our list of Senate disclosures.) The House and Senate should make all of their reports available online, in real time, and in machine readable format. When there are privacy implications of making information available, such as the inclusion of home addresses and social security numbers, that information should be redacted, of course.
In the Internet age, there’s no good reason to have documents available only in a room at Capitol Hill. The House has made some progress, for example, publishing its Statement of Disbursements of the House online, but there’s more that both chambers should do. (Continue reading…)
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72 Hours is Now, Again
The Senate’s version of the health care bill was published on Wednesday, along with its CBO score.
Since the first preliminary procedural vote isn’t expected until Saturday evening, it looks likely that the Senate’s bill will see 72 hours in public, online, before its first vote.
Senators, their staff, and the public will all have a chance to digest this legislation before its formal floor consideration.
While the ReadtheBill.org effort has focused primarily on the House, the same banner was taken up in the Senate in early October, when Senators Lincoln, Bayh, Landrieu, Lieberman, McCaskill, Nelson, Pryor, and Webb wrote Majority Leader Reid, requesting 72 hours before an initial vote:
Every step of the process needs to be transparent, and information regarding the bill needs to be readily available to our constituents before the Senate starts to vote on legislation that will affect the lives of every American. The legislative text and complete budget scores from the Congressional Budget Office (C.B.O.) of the health care legislation considered on the Senate floor should be made available on a Web site the public can access for at least 72 hours prior to the first vote to proceed to the legislation.
By posting these materials online, Majority Leader Reid is strengthening and legitimizing the floor debate on the bill, and probably defending against some process criticism. He’ll also be raising the bar, showing that public scrutiny of legislation online should be a welcome component of Congress’s work.
As I suggested after Speaker Pelosi’s commitment and delivery on their 72 hour promise, if they can do it for health care — the toughest and most contentious of contexts — they can do it for every bill.
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Interim Kennedy Replacement Has Deep Corporate Connections
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is set to name former Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Kirk, 71, the interim senator to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Kirk, a close Kennedy confidante, was the choice of the late Sen. Kennedy’s close family. Kirk would come into office at an important moment as the Senate prepares to vote on vast legislation to reform health care and regulate the financial sector. Kirk’s current and previous employment may not make him look like the best choice for this moment. Kirk is the CEO and Chairman of Kirk & Associates, a business consulting company, and sits on the board of both an insurance company, The Hartford Financial Group, and a timber and real estate company, Rayonier, Inc. Kirk also previously worked as a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company, Aventis.
The Hartford Financial Group (known as The Hartford) stands out particularly among all of the Kirk’s connections as the firm’s clout fell dramatically after the September 2008 financial collapse. In November 2008, the firm received $3.4 billion in TARP aid from the Treasury Department. The firm has been downgraded by analysts multiple times this year.
Kirk sits on the Compensation and Personnel Committee for The Hartford in charge of employee compensation and executive bonuses. While compensation fell significantly from 2007 to 2008, this did not keep The Hartford from escaping criticism for compensation policies. Ramani Ayer, CEO and Chairman of The Hartford, was named by Forbes Magazine one of the most overpaid executives in 2008. This despite his compensation being reduced from $15.8 in 2007 to $9 million in 2008. Ayer’s stewardship of the firm sat at the center of his placement on Forbes’ list. According to Forbes, Ayer’s six year average compensation stands at $13.5 million while the annualized six year total return was -17%.
In 1999, Kirk represented the pharmaceutical company Aventis as a lobbyist for Sullivan & Worcester. Kirk listed on his lobbying disclosure forms “FDA reform” as the sole issue and the Senate as the only body he was lobbying. In 1997, Congress passed and the President signed into law the FDA Modernization Act. One provision of the bill sought to curb red-tape and regulation to streamline the drug approval process. After the bill’s passage pharmaceutical companies and their lobbying arm, PhRMA, complained about the FDA’s speed at implementing the legislation and continued existence of some regulatory barriers. In 1999, the Senate held hearings on the subject with PhRMA President Alan Holmer told the Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee that the legislation “fails to provide the regulatory relief Congress intended and actually codifies some of the agency’s prior-approval practices that Congress wanted to eliminate.” Kirk’s focus on “FDA reform” for Aventis was likely related to the complaints about the FDA Modernization Act and its implementation.
Rayonier, one of the largest holders of land in the country, is currently lobbying the United States Senate on the definition of biomass in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). The Senate is likely to take up ACES soon after it completes work on health care reform legislation.
Kirk previously worked as a special assistant to the late Sen. Kennedy from 1969 to 1977 and is the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.
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The House and Senate’s Public — But Not Online — Documents
Over the last month, Sunlight has examined the document collections of the Office of the House Clerk and Office of the Secretary of the Senate to find out what they have. There seems to be an even split between public documents that are available online and those which you have to visit their office to read – or are not publicly available at all. Here is our list of House and Senate documents, which contain summaries of what we found.
The Senate makes available a handy report listing all of their public documents, but you have to goto their public record’s office to obtain a copy. (We’ve uploaded the 2009 version.) The House doesn’t have an equivalent report, although they do make available a bookmark listing some of their resources. Both offices charge a per-page printing/copying fee ($0.10/page for the House and $0.20/page for the Senate). Neither office lets users make copies of their electronic files, whether in whole or in part, even though many files are available in electronic format on dedicated computers in their offices. (Continue reading…)
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Success! Senate to post expenditure reports
The Senate is going to follow the House in posting their office expenditure reports online for the public to view. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn offered an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act requiring the Secretary of the Senate to post all expenditure reports online.
Coburn’s amendment has elements that are both better and worse than the House’s efforts to disclose office expenditures. The better is a lot better: reports will be posted in a searchable, itemized format. (The House plans to only post PDFs.) Unfortunately, we won’t get to see those reports until the 2011. Coburn’s amendment delays disclosure, likely for the Secretary of the Senate to build infrastructure for disclosure, until the start of the 112th Congress, or 2011. The House will begin disclosing later this year.
Below is the language of the amendment: (Continue reading…)
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Is Ensign’s Sex Scandal More Than a Sex Scandal?
Yesterday, Sen. John Ensign admitted to an affair with a campaign staffer who was also the wife of Ensign’s administrative assistant. The couple ensnared in this torrid love triangle is Douglas Hampton, the administrative assistant, and Cynthia Hampton, an employee of Ensign’s 2008 campaign and his Battle Born PAC. We know that Ensign revealed the affair because Douglas Hampton essentially blackmailed the senator. But, were the Hamptons receiving excessive pay from Ensign during the affair period? Politico looked at the official office payments to Douglas Hampton and found some numbers that look a bit… odd:
Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign’s administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 – required for senior congressional staffers – showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined.
A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.
Now, you might immediately think that $144,000 for an administrative assistant is an absurd amount, but administrative assistant is often synonymous with chief of staff on the Hill. However, if you look to the reporting period of 4/1/2008 to 5/1/08:
Hampton was paid approximately $20,000 over this one month period. At the same time, Ensign hired a chief of staff, John Lopez, ostensibly to replace Hampton. If we are to assume that Hampton’s annual salary is around $144,000 — the cap on staffer salaries is around $160,000 — then the $20,000 for one month ($240,000 in a year) would be far higher than his normal rate of pay. Over the four months of 2008 Hampton received $101,000, far more than his rate of pay for all of 2007.
There are a few points to be made here:
1) Staff salary reporting is often not aligned with the dates shown. If you look at Legistorm, you will see dates aligned with amounts. This is often not accurate, or includes bonuses with attribution.
2) Hampton could have collected his vacation pay, sick leave and a bonus at his termination, which would make his salary appear inflated.
3) Hampton could have stayed on to train Lopez in his new job. This would explain the overlap of two employees holding the same job.
(More: While writing this post, Politico released another report showing that the son of Douglas and Cynthia Hampton was on the payroll of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) while Ensign headed the organization. Also, this post about whether the Hamptons were pushed to extort Ensign due to a subprime mortgage on their house is worth a look too.)
Since these questions are integral to whether Hampton was received extra pay while Ensign was sleeping with his wife, there are important disclosure problems that need to be addressed. They are:
- The Senate does not disclose their office expenditures online in any format at all. The House is planning on disclosing online in August. The Senate has no plans.
- We could use better staff salary expenditure information so that the pay doesn’t look so confusing. Sorry Hill staffers, I know you hate it, but you work for the government.
- Why is it that Senate campaigns do not disclose expenditures? Yet another failure due to the lack of electronic filing in the Senate. Due to the lack of electronic filing we can’t — easily — find the precise amounts paid to Cynthia Hampton through Ensign’s campaign committee, only his PAC.
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Member Expenses Continued
Earlier this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that lawmaker office expenses would be placed online at the earliest possible time. According to House Chief Administrative Officer Dan Beard, that earliest date will likely be August 31. Beard, according to the Wall Street Journal, also stated intentions to make the disclosure more accessible in the future, “Electronic versions of the ink-and-paper reports will initially be posted in PDF format. The House “is examining ways” to enhance the ability to search the documents when it rolls out a new internal financial-processing system during the 112th Congress.”
While this policy applies only to the House, the Senate may be pushed into taking action as well. The Journal is also reporting that Sen. Tom Coburn will introduce a bill to require the online disclosure of Senate office expenses. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office states that they will look at the issue:
Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) said Wednesday he would introduce a bill requiring the expense records be posted online in the Senate, as well. Such disclosures are “something that we will take a look at,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.).
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What you need to know about Supreme Court nominations
Today’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will set off the usual partisan bromides about judicial activists, up or down votes, and filibusters. Missing in the exclamatory punctuations of the paid political muppets on television is a background on judicial nominations to help you understand the process. What do you need to know about the process? I’ll try to answer that below.
The key player that you need to follow is the Senate Judiciary Committee. Once the President nominates someone to a federal court — in this case, Sotomayor — they must go through a confirmation process that begins in the Judiciary Committee. The committee consists of 12 Democrats and 7 Republicans, making a successful confirmation hearing highly likely.
The Judiciary Committee has not always been the central player in judicial nominations that it is is now. In the early- to mid-19th century, the role of committees, and even their permanence, was ill-defined. The Judiciary Committee only received one out of three judicial nominations; the rest were approved solely by the full Senate. In 1868, as the committee structure became more normalized and entrenched, the committee began to receive nearly all Supreme Court nominees.
(Continue reading…)
