Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised a vote on a bill to end the practice of secret holds in the Senate before the end of the year. Reid has now informed the senators pushing the bill that he will hold a vote on the bill as an amendment to the defense authorization bill, according to CongressDaily.

Senate Majority Leader Reid has informed Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., that a bill they have co-sponsored to curtail secret holds will receive a vote as an amendment to the defense authorization bill that Reid plans to move to next week, McCaskill and Senate aides said today.

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More than 60 senators have signed a letter circulated by McCaskill that urged curtailing secret holds through steps like the Wyden-Grassley proposal, generating expectations that the plan has the votes to overcome any filibuster. But how the measure is brought up may influence how much support it can get.

All 67 senators who signed a letter supporting this bill circulated by Sen. Claire McCaskill should vote yes on this bill when it comes up as an amendment next week. This is a test of whether senators wish to have a more transparent and open Congress or not.

We are another step closer to the end of secret holds in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has placed the Secret Holds Elimination Act on the Senate calendar making it easy for Reid to call the bill up for a vote. The Secret Holds Elimination Act would require senators to publicly disclose all holds placed on nominations and legislation. Here's the press release from Sen. Claire McCaskill's office:

Legislation authored by U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa) and Claire McCaskill (D- Mo.) to eliminate a senator's ability to obstruct legislation in secret was placed on the Senate calendar today, opening the door for a definitive up or down vote on the legislation. The modified version of the "Secret Holds Elimination Act"- previously introduced by Wyden and Grassley - will require that all holds be submitted in writing and disclosed after one legislative day.

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The three have now joined forces to introduce a new version of the Secret Holds Elimination Act. The legislation will require that all holds on legislation and nominees be submitted in writing and automatically printed in the Congressional Record after one legislative day, whether the bill or nomination has been brought up for floor consideration or not. The latter provision will eliminate the all-too-common practice of secret holds being used to indefinitely prevent bills from reaching the Senate floor.

Sen. Claire McCaskill spent the past few months moving from Senate office to Senate office seeking supporters of her provision to end secret holds in the Senate for good. It seems that all that work has paid off and she now has the requisite 67 votes to change Senate rules.

The Kansas City Star reports that Sens. Kit Bond and Sam Brownback have signed on as the 66th and 67th cosponsors of McCaskill's bill. The bill is supported now by 58 Democrats and 9 Republicans.

This is an excellent development for transparency in the Senate as numerous bills and appointments have been secretly held up for no explainable reason. The Sunlight Foundation has a long history of dealing with secret holds as some of our priority bills enhancing transparency in our government were held up by secret holds.

Back in 2006, the year of Sunlight's birth, we joined a coalition of blogs and anti-government waste groups like Porkbusters to uncover the secret hold on the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) that went on to create USASpending.gov. FFATA was sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn and then-Sen. Barack Obama. It was, perhaps, the President's chief accomplishment as a senator.

Over 2007 and 2008, there were a series of secret holds placed on a bill to require senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically. Yet again, we waged an outing campaign against the secret holder. This one was less successful than the FFATA secret hold outing as everyone denied having the secret hold.

Senators are not simply objecting to presidential nominees or other bills on meritorious grounds. These two instances have shown senators secretly blocking bills that would create more transparency in government. That is an outrage and so are secret holds.

It seems that the most senators who have joined the Senate since the secret hold practice was revealed as an odious relic of a bygone era understand that practices in the Senate need to change. Eighteen of the twenty-one senators elected in 2006 and 2008 have cosponsored McCaskill's bill.

The only Democrat to not co-sponsor the bill is the longest serving senator ever, Sen. Robert Byrd. Byrd, coincidentally, was also one of two senators to have placed a secret hold on the federal funding transparency bill that created USASpending.gov.

If you've ever tried to research federal contracts you'll find that the databases used to house those contracts online are not so great. Sen. Claire McCaskill held a hearing yesterday titled, "Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases." Nancy Scola wrote up the hearing and it isn't pretty:

All told, there are a million lines of code involved. But there's really no all told here, because the databases don't talk to one another. For example, FPDS, the Federal Procurement Data System doesn't communicate with EPLS, which stands for Excluded Parties List. Which means that theUSASpending.gov website -- heralded as the American public's window into the inner-workings of government, but powered by FPDS -- doesn't even know that contractors contained within it have been banished from government service for defrauding the United States government or otherwise behaving badly. What's more, on some of these legacy systems, a search for Contractor X, Inc. won't return results for Contractor X Inc. The shorthand for that particular wrinkle came to be known, during the hearing, as "the comma problem."

In fact, GAO's William Woods explained to the senators, the poor state of those databases meant that when his agency was asked by Congress to detail how many contractors were billing the United States government for work in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government watchdog group was forced by technology to admit its ignorance. "We could not answer those questions," said Woods. How many KBRs are at work in American war zones, being paid with taxpayer dollars? How many Blackwaters? Dunno.

The biggest problem, however, didn't turn out to be the current state of disrepair, but rather the inability to figure out what to do with the whole disclosure regime. To the surprise of almost everyone in the committee room, the General Services Administration (GSA) has been working to create a more sensible contractor disclosure regime with a more accessible public face. It was difficult for federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to identify who exactly would be overseeing the -- yes -- contract to revamp the databases. Ultimately that responsibility came down to either the GSA, the Office of Management and Budget or the Office of Federal Procurement.

As Scola writes, "Senator Robert Bennett spoke for many of us today when he sat up on the dais in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and rubbed his temples over, and over, and over, and over again."

A good week for electronic filing in the Senate. Sen. Claire McCaskill becomes the second senator to cosponsor S. 482 this week. We are up to 35 cosponsors! If you want to help move the Senate into the 21st century, go to the Pass 482 site and call your senators.

If you're on Twitter, feel free to thank Sen. McCaskill (@clairecmc) for cosponsoring this important bill.

Yesterday, Earl Devany, Inspector General for the stimulus, and Rob Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), went before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs to discuss details of their oversight plan for recovery funds. One of the chief topics was the web site, Recovery.gov. The White House has sold Recovery.gov as a beacon of transparency, a web site a top a hill that will shine down as an example for all government web sites. However, as our Bill Allison has noted in numerous venues, the web site does not offer all of the information or content that it could. This lack of content became a sticking point in the hearing.

Devaney, who answered most of the questions, agreed with many of the senators who complained that Recovery.gov was not all it was cracked up to be. Describing why citizens are going to the web site, which is receiving high traffic, Devaney chalked it up to "curiosity," but stated that if the web site does not become more interactive and substantive, the public will lose faith in the recovery effort. This applies particularly to interactivity and responses to user comments, Devaney stated, and that the recovery oversight board needed to get out in front of this faster.

In achieving the goal of interactivity, Devaney said that he is talking to outside groups and individuals who have ideas about how to sort through millions of comments and respond appropriately. He also stated that he is willing to meet with any of "the smartest people" to talk about this.

Sen. Tom Coburn raised pointed questions regarding the accessibility of the data, contrasting the data search functions and presentation on Recovery.gov to that of USASpending.gov, the federal site tracking all federal spending. Coburn's biggest issues were the lack of multiple search capabilities on Recovery.gov and why USASpending.gov wasn't used to display the recovery spending. Nabors responded that the public has a unique interest in the recovery spending and that the information needed to be brought to the public in a speedier fashion than USASpending.gov could deliver. The idea behind Recovery.gov is to provide real time tracking of recovery spending. In his "wildest dreams," Nabors declared, he would want to be able to track overall spending, as in what is displayed on USASpending.gov, in real time.

Coburn pointedly asked when the "ideal" Recovery.gov would be online. Devaney, under pressure from Coburn, answered, "Yes," after Coburn asked him if the site would be complete in a year.

One of the more interesting suggestions came from Sen. Claire McCaskill, asking Devaney if he had considered hiring unemployed journalists to provide investigative capability along with context and storytelling to Recovery.gov. Devaney, in what seemed like a happy surprise to McCaskill, stated that he had two interviews scheduled with journalists the very next day. McCaskill responded, "Great minds think alike."

Yesterday, we announced a campaign to pass S. 482, the Senate electronic filing bill. There are two tacks to this campaign: one involves calling your senators and seeking support for the bill and opposition to a potential poison pill amendment, the other involves "tweeting" to the 17 senators on Twitter to try and secure their support for the bill or thank them for cosponsoring. After one day, we have already received positive responses from both Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Claire McCaskill. Both stated their support for the bill over Twitter:

clairecmc: I've supported electronic filing of campaign reports for a long time. It's embarrassing that we are not required to file electronically.#482

Barbara_Boxer: Thanks to all who tweeted me about e-filing of campaign finance reports. I was a cosponsor of S. 482 before and will do so again.

In less than 24 hours, 2 out of 15 of the senators on Twitter who had not cosponsored are now cosponsors. (UPDATE: Sen. McCaskill has not yet officially cosponsored the bill and simply stated her support, Sen. Boxer officially cosponsored the bill yesterday. We hope that McCaskill turns her support into being an actual cosponsor soon.) In terms of grassroots outreach that is an amazing turn around. (See also, Clay's post at Sunlight Labs.) In both the Boxer and McCaskill responses we can see that Twitter is a great way to communicate with constituents. Thanks to everyone who helped "tweet" these senators.

We still your help in making telephone calls to Senate offices. So far, 67 calls have been made. We need to keep the pressure on to make sure that this bill finally passes. Go to the Pass 482 site and follow the instructions to call your senators. It's very easy.

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Chair Joe Lieberman just sent out a release announcing the creation of a new subcommittee to provide oversight of government contracting. The Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight will be headed by Sen. Claire McCaskill, long a proponent of exposing fraud and waste in contracting.

“Management of federal contracts is one of the greatest operational challenges facing the federal government,” Lieberman said. “Spending on federal contracts rose to an astounding $532 billion last year. And for years the Government Accountability Office has listed government contracting on its list of programs at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, or in need of comprehensive reform. This is a problem area that needs as much oversight as we can possibly muster.

“So, to more fully address the array of problems with federal contracting, I am establishing this new subcommittee with pride and great expectations. With her background as a prosecutor and state auditor, Senator McCaskill has unique investigative experience that will be crucial for this new subcommittee. I am certain that she will approach her new responsibilities with unmatched vigor to improve the value of all the taxpayer dollars devoted to federal contracting.”

McCaskill said: “Last year we made major strides in contracting accountability by establishing the Wartime Contracting Commission, and while I look forward to those investigations, we all know that outrageous contracting abuses occur in every facet of government. I can't wait to get to work saving huge money for taxpayers. They deserve it.”

Over the past few years various senators have attempted to create a committee or a commission both in the form of the famous Truman Committee, which investigated fraud and waste in World War II defense contracting. Sen. Byron Dorgan was in favor of the creation of a committee with full subpoena power, while Sen. Jim Webb and McCaskill sought the creation of commission with more limited powers. The Webb-McCaskill commission, named the Wartime Contracting Commission, was eventually established last year, but has yet to hold hearings.

The establishment of this new subcommittee, with oversight over more than just defense contracts, marks a huge step forward in the efforts by many to maintain a government contracting system that is free of waste, fraud, and corruption.