(This post was prepared in collaboration with Dan Drinkard)

If you do well on your SAT test, then you will __ your chance of becoming a member of the U.S. Congress some day.

A. Vindicate

B. Scrutinize

C. Compromise

D. Discredit

E. Enhance

While the correct answer should probably be E (Enhance), the reality is that it might be closer to C  (Compromise) or D (Discredit).  At least, when it comes to the 112^th Congress, top SAT words are far and few between.

We find that only 10 members of Congress have used at least 20 of the Kaplan 100 Most Common SAT Words so far in the 112^th Congress, and that only 92 members of Congress have used at least 10 of these words. More than half of the members of Congress have used five or fewer. And 32 members did not use a single Kaplan 100 word, while 52 members only said one. In total, 0.046% of all words spoken in the Congressional Record were Kaplan 100 words.

For an analysis of how Congressional speech has dropped by a full grade level since 2005, click here.

Among the Kaplan 100, the word spoken most frequently in Congress is “compromise.” It had been uttered 1,820 times this Congress as of the end of April, far more as an aspiration than a description. Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has uttered the word 142 times, more than anyone else. Unfortunately, speaking it does not make it so.

Likewise, the other top words – prosperity (923 times), integrity (883 times), and exemplary (582) – also seem far more hopeful than reality-based. Table 1 (below) shows the Kaplan 100 words spoken most frequently in the 112th Congress.

Table 1. Top 20 most-spoken Kaplan 100 words, 112th Congress Of the Kaplan 100, 14 words are missing entirely from the Congressional Record for the 112th Congress so far. They are: abbreviate; conformist; enervating; evanescent; florid; hackneyed; haughty; hedonist; ostentatious; perfidious; pretentious; querulous; sagacity; submissive.

For the full list of the top 100 words and how much they’ve been spoken and by whom, click here.

Who’s used the most unique SAT words in the 112^th Congress? That distinction belongs to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who, as of April 2012, had used 27 of the Kaplan 100, putting him just ahead of fellow Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has verbalized 26 of the 100 words so far, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who has uttered 25. Leahy has also used Kaplan 100 words a total of 127 times, also just edging out Durbin, who used the words 122 times.

Rounding out the top ten list for most unique Kaplan 100 words spoken are Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). All have got there by speaking at least 100,000 words so far in the 112^th Congress. Of the top ten list, Snowe has both the highest grade level for her speech (14^th grade), and the highest number of Kaplan 100 words per 100,000 words spoken: 76.5.

 

Table 2. Members who speak the most unique Kaplan 100 words For a full list of how all members compare, click here.

(This post was prepared in collaboration with Dan Drinkard)

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

Of course, what some might interpret as a dumbing down of Congress, others will see as more effective communications. And lawmakers of both parties still speak above the heads of the average American, who reads at between an 8^th and 9^th grade level.

Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. Most major newspapers are written at between an 11^th and 14^th grade level. (You can find more comparisons here)

All these analyses use the Flesch-Kincaid test, which produces the 'reads at a n-th grade level' terminology that is likely familiar to many readers. At its core, Flesch-Kincaid equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences. It is important to understand the limitations of this metric: it tells us nothing about the clarity or correctness of a passage of text. But although an admittedly crude tool, Flesch-Kincaid can nonetheless provide insights into how different legislators speak, and how Congressional speech has been changing.

To see how different legislators rank, click here for a full database of all current members of Congress.

To see how many top SAT words lawmakers speak, click here.

Historical trends

Overall, the complexity of speech in the Congressional Record has declined steadily since 2005, with the drop among Republicans slightly outpacing that for Democrats (see Figure 1). Through April 25, 2012, this year's Congressional Record clocks in at a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005.

Between 1996 and 2005, Republicans overall spoke at consistently 2/10ths of a grade level higher than Democrats, except for 2001, when a rare moment of national unity also seems to have extended to speaking at the same grade level. But following 2005, something happened, and Congressional speech has been on the decline since. For Republicans as a whole, the decline was from an 11.6 grade level to a 10.3 grade level in 2011 (up slightly to 10.4 in 2012 so far). For Democrats, it was a decline from 11.4 to 10.6 in 2011 (also up slightly to 10.8 in 2012 so far.)

Figure 1. Congressional speech grade level by year

     

Ideology and speech complexity

To analyze the relationship between ideology and speech level, we took the first dimension DW-Nominate scores (DW1) for the current Congress, as of April 25, 2012. For the non-political scientists in the audience, DW1 scores take roll call voting data to place members of Congress on a liberal-conservative scale. On this scale, -1 is most liberal and 1 is most conservative. A negative value on the scale implies that the member votes most often with Democrats; a positive value implies that the member votes most often with Republicans.

Turning to Figure 2, we can immediately notice that grade level of Congressional Record speeches declines among Republicans as the voting record becomes more conservative. Among Republicans, the drop from the most moderate to most conservative is, on average, almost three whole grade levels, from 13^th to 10^th grade.

Among Democrats, the scatterplot does not reveal any relationship between grade level and ideology. However, when we hold all other factors constant in the regression analysis (see further below), we find that being on the far left is associated with lower speech grade levels. There is also a clearer correlation between further left voting score and lower grade level among more junior members.

Figure 2. The relationship of ideology to speech grade level

     

Changing members and members’ changes

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause of the decline. Perhaps it reflects lawmakers speaking more in talking points, and increasingly packaging their floor speeches for YouTube. Gone, perhaps, are the golden days when legislators spoke to persuade each other, thoughtfully wrestled with complex policy trade-offs, and regularly quoted Shakespeare.

The data indicate that part of the decline has to do with new junior members speaking at a lower grade level than more senior members, and some of it has to do with individual senior members simplifying their speech over time.

Figure 3 (below) breaks Congress into four seniority cohorts and details the relationship between ideology and grade level for speeches in the 112^th Congress.

Here, a telling pattern emerges. Among the newest members (those with 1-3 years in their seat), there is drop off in speech level as we move from the center out to either extreme of the political spectrum, though the pattern is more pronounced on the far right. For the next cohort (4-10 years of experience), the same pattern continues on both the political right and left, though the relationship is much stronger among Republicans.

For the next cohort (11-20 years in their seat), the pattern on the right (more conservative, simpler speech) remains, but the pattern on the left reverses (there is a slight correlation between more liberalism and higher speech grade level). In the most senior cohort (more than 20 years in their seat), Republicans speak, on average, at a higher level than Democrats, with only the slightest relationship between conservatism and more simple speech.

Figure 3. Ideology and Seniority

   

At the individual level, prior to the 109^th Congress (2005-2006), both individual Democrats and Republicans on average grew more sophisticated in their speech with each passing session of Congress. Individual Democrats gained on average 0.06 grade levels per session, and Republicans gained on average 0.12 grade levels per session. Then, starting with the 109^th Congress, the trends reversed. Individual Democrats began dropping 0.07 grade levels of speech per session and individual Republicans began dropping 0.12 grade levels per session.

 

Table 1. Average estimated effect of each passing Congress on individual member grade level (results from regression analysis estimating annual member change with member fixed effects)

 

The top and bottom lawmakers by grade level

Table 2 (below) shows the 20 members of Congress with the lowest grade level score for their Congressional record corpus dating back to 1996. Of them, 85% (17 of 20) are Republicans; 65% (13/20) are freshmen, and another 15% (3/20) are sophomores. Additionally, 90% (18/20) are House members. The two Senators to make the bottom 20 are Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), both Tea Party-supported freshmen.

Table 2. Bottom 20 speakers by grade level (all speeches since 1996) Republicans also outnumber Democrats among the members who speak at the highest grade levels. Among the top 20, 12 are Republicans, 7 are Democrats, and one (Joe Lieberman) is an Independent. And eight of the top ten are Republicans. There are also 14 House members and six Senators. And perhaps most notably, there are only two freshmen and three sophomores. More than half of the members have been in their seat for at least 15 years, which is well above the median of nine years across all members of the 112^th Congress.

Table 3. Top 20 speakers by grade level (all speeches since 1996) Regression analysis

To estimate the effects of all the different factors (holding all the other factors constant), we estimated two ordinary least squared regression models. Model 1 uses the different factors to explain the variation in the grade level of individual members’ combined speeches since 1996. Model 2 uses the same factors to explain the grade level of member speeches just in the 112^th Congress. (The correlation between all speeches since 1996 and just 112^th Congress speeches for non-freshmen members is 0.74. For freshmen, these two measures will obviously be the same.)

For Democrats, moving from most moderate (DW1 score of 0) to most liberal (DW1 score of -1) is associated with a decrease in 1.59 grade levels for all speeches since 1996 combined, and an decrease of 1.35 grade levels for speeches from just the 112^th Congress, all else being equal. This estimate is statistically significant.

For Republicans, moving from most moderate (0) to most conservative (1) is associated with a decrease in 2.07 grade levels in speech for all speeches since 1996 combined, and 2.06 grade levels for just the 112^th Congress, all else being equal. Both are statistically significant. That the estimates for the relationship between ideology and grade level are consistent across the two models shows that this is both a current and a historic phenomenon.

Another takeaway point from the regression analysis is that the more a member speaks overall, the more simply that member is likely to speak, all else being equal. For just the 112^th Congress, going from least to most talkative is associated with a decrease in almost a grade level and a half. For the historic corpus, going from the least talkative to most talkative member is associated with a decrease in a full grade level.

Socioeconomic status of member district does not play much of a role, so there is no story to tell of members speaking to their constituents. If anything, the reverse is true. Having a higher percentage of high school graduates in the district or state is associated with members speaking at a slightly lower grade level (though since half of the districts have high school graduation levels between 82% and 90%, this doesn’t add up to all that much). District median income (which is closely correlated with education generally) has no relationship to speech grade level. There is also no statistically significant difference between chambers. Members of Congress from the Northeast speak at a slightly higher grade level than their colleagues from the rest of the country.

Of course, a fair amount of variation remains unexplained. There are many reasons why members speak at different levels, and these explanations only tell part of the story.

 

Table 4. OLS Regression explaining member speech level (standard errors in parenthesis, significant variables bolded) Does it matter?

Earlier this year, the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics noted that Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address clocked in at an eighth-grade level for the third year in a row, and that Obama’s average grade level of 8.4 was well below the average of 10.7 for the previous 67 addresses. Fox News ran the story alongside the image of a child in a dunce cap, and right-wing blogs mocked the President’s intelligence.

Others pointed out that maybe speaking clearly was a good thing. After all, the SOTU speech was pretty much right at the level of the average American’s reading level. And writing gurus like George Orwell (“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out”) and Strunk & White (“omit needless words”) famously advise simplicity.

But whether you see it as plain speak or you see it as a dumbing down, the data are clear: The overall complexity of speech in the Congressional Record has dropped almost a full grade level since 2005. And those on the political extremes, especially those on the far right, tend to be associated with the most simple speech patterns.

Methodology for generating grade level scores

(by Dan Drinkard)

Grade levels were calculated using Flesch-Kincaid readability tests applied to various facets of text queries against the Capitol Words API. For example, Barbara Lee's entire corpus of words spoken can be retrieved by paging through the following url: http://capitolwords.org/api/text.json?bioguide_id=L000551&apikey=####.

Flesch-Kincaid scores can be determined as: 0.39 * (Words/Sentences) + 11.8 * (Syllables/Words) - 15.59.

To derive counts: The python Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK)'s sentence tokenizer was used to count sentences, the Capitol Words ngram tokenizer was used to count words, and the Carnegie Mellon pronouncing dictionary was used to count syllables. For fallback syllable counting when a word wasn't present in the dictionary, three different sets of calculations employing different methods were tried—discarding unknown words, treating unknown words as the average word of 1.66 syllables, and using a trained fallback syllable counter from NLTK_Contrib. We found the results of each method to be nearly indistinguishable from the others. An example F-K calculator (this one using the aforementioned 'padding with averages' method) can be found at https://gist.github.com/2483508.

 

News Without Transparency: House Passes Bridge Bill After an Earmark Debate

Matt Rumsey and Melanie Buck wrote this post. 

Earlier this spring, the New York Times reported that the House approved bipartisan legislation allowing construction of a new bridge crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin. At the price of $700 million the bridge will connect two towns, each with 4,000 residents.

Much of the information included in the article can be accessed via Congress’ online legislative information system, THOMAS. THOMAS was launched as part of Newt Gingrich’s efforts to modernize House technology following the 1994 elections and continues to provide an outlet for increasing public access to government information. Using THOMAS you can access the text of the legislation as well as information on votes, sponsors, and related bills.

The article states that “the vote was 339 to 80, with 16 Republicans and 64 Democrats voting against the measure.” Roll call votes are recorded by the Clerk of the House and can be accessed through either the Clerk’s website or in a centralized THOMAS location. House rules mandate that most votes are recorded electronic device. Vote information is then published in the Congressional record and posted online.

Critics of the bill claimed that the legislation effectively served as an earmark, approving a specific project in its sponsors’ congressional district and including $8 million that had previously been earmarked for the project. Since Congress decided to ban earmarks in late fall 2010, it has frequently been reported that similar projects are still being funded through various loopholes. Prior to the earmark ban, both the House and Senate required that earmark requests be reported to the Office of Management and Budget. It is still possible to search for earmarks between FY 2005 and FY 2010 using the OMB database.

The new bridge is intended to replace The Stillwater Lift Bridge, originally built in 1931. The article states that while the bridge was initially intended for light traffic, it now carries 16,000 cars per day. This information can be confirmed by  accessing a public website maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

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"The News Without Transparency" shows you what the news would look like without public access to information. Laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available are absolutely vital, along with services that take that raw data and make it easy for reporters to write sentences like the ones we've redacted in the piece above. If you have an article you'd like us to put through the redaction machine, please send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.

The analysis was conducted at the request of and in collaboration with This American Life and Planet Money public radio programs. It is featured on the March 31, 2012 episode of This American Life.

When it comes to fundraising potential, not all committee assignments in the U.S. House are created equal. A new Sunlight analysis of House fundraising patterns  from the 103^rd to 111^th Congress finds that three committees – Ways and Means, Financial Services, and Energy and Commerce – stand out as being particularly lucrative. Others – most notably Judiciary, House Administration, and Natural Resources, appear to be fundraising duds.

Table 1 shows are the estimated committee “bonuses” for individual member itemized and PAC fundraising totals. Relationships that are statistically significant are in bold.

Table 1. Estimated committee assignment “bonuses”

Committee Assignment	Estimated itemized contributions “bonus”	Estimated PAC contribution “bonus”
Ways and Means	+$258,924	+$295,774
Financial Services	+$181,799	+$122,313
Energy and Commerce	+$142,030	+$197,220
Agriculture	+$64,319	+$118,111
Appropriations	+$58,127	+$46,509
Transportation	+$49,290	+$60,952
Homeland Security	+$28,754	+$57,502
Armed Services	+$23,683	+$6,619
Rules	-$26,979	+$32,843
Foreign Affairs	-$39,845	-$72,994
Science	-$46,287	+$3,184
Budget	-$60,586	-$47,423
Small Business	-$69,262	-$21,554
Government Reform	-$81,104	-$34,348
Veterans' Affairs	-$83,442	-$15,786
Education	-$94,657	-$43,864
Natural Resources	-$102,699	-$45,556
House Administration	-$159,370	-$82,454
Judiciary	-$181,987	-$83,598

These estimates come from a multivariate regression that compares all members across multiple sessions of congress, controlling for seniority, majority status, and session of congress, with fundraising totals adjusted for inflation. The complete regression results can be found here. See below for a more complete explanation for how we came to these results.

 

Committee switches

Another way to evaluate the value of committees is to look at  patterns of incumbent switching. Table 2 looks at what assignments incumbent House members selected (or were given) from the 104^th through 111^th Congress.

Table 2. Incumbent committee switches

Committee	Joined	Left	Join-to-Leave Ratio
Ways and Means	53	4	13.3-to-1
Energy and Commerce	76	10	7.6-to-1
Appropriations	63	11	5.7-to-1
Homeland Security	33	13	2.5-to-1
House Administration	51	27	1.9-to-1
Rules	18	14	1.3-to-1
Foreign Affairs	54	48	1.1-to-1
Judiciary	21	23	0.9-to-1
Budget	82	104	0.8-to-1
Financial Services	42	68	0.6-to-1
Education	45	73	0.6-to-1
Transportation	42	69	0.6-to-1
Armed Services	25	44	0.6-to-1
Natural Resources	36	66	0.5-to-1
Government Reform	50	120	0.4-to-1
Science	29	90	0.3-to-1
Veterans’ Affairs	16	50	0.3-to-1
Agriculture	14	56	0.3-to-1
Small Business	18	100	0.2-to-1

Certain committees are clearly more popular than others. Over almost two decades, Ways and Means had 53 incumbents join, but only four leave. Energy and Commerce had 76 incumbents join, but only 10 leave, and Appropriations had 62 incumbents join, but only 11 leave.

Other committees have different flows. Judging by members’ behaviors, the least desirable committee to be on is Small Business – only 18 incumbents joined, while 100 left. Agriculture and Veterans’ Affairs are also committees that incumbents leave far more often than they join.

This way of ranking committees generally correlates with the fundraising prowess of the committees (Table 1). Ways and Means tops both lists, and Energy and Commerce is in the top three of both lists. However, Financial Services is a net loser among incumbents. Perhaps this is because many members find the subject matter too complicated or boring for their tastes. And Judiciary, which is associated with lower fundraising flows, is just about in the middle when it comes to the balance of incumbent leavers and joiners.

It is important to recognize that members may care about more than just raising money, and may have genuine policy interests. Also, members who are in relatively safe districts and have fewer ambitions to rise up in the party may be quite happy to serve on committees with less fundraising potential.

 

Methodology: How we got these results

The estimates for committee fundraising “bonuses” (Table 1) come from the results of regressions that estimate different aspects of individual member fundraising as a function of members’ committee assignments and ranking on those committees, controlling for majority party, seniority, and different congresses. We’ve adjusted for inflation so that all fundraising totals are in 2012 dollars.

The complete results of this series of regressions are published here: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Regression-1-Effects-Of-Committee-Assignments-On-C/dk8x-utgd

The results report four different sets of columns. The first set of columns estimates the effect of committee assignments on the total itemized contributions. The second set of columns estimates the effect on individual itemized contributions. The third column estimates the effect on PAC contributions. The fourth estimates itemized out-of-state contributions. Essentially, what we have done is compared all members to all other members across multiple Congresses, trying to isolate the statistical relationship of committee assignments and fundraising totals.

For each set of columns, the predicted effect of different assignments and control variables are in the first column, the standard error in the second, and the t-stat (the effect divided by the standard error, a measure of statistical significance) in the third.

So, for example, being on the Ways and Means committee is associated with $258,924 more in total itemized contributions, as compared to not being on the committee, all else being equal. The standard error for this estimate is $63,543, so we can think of $258,924 +/- $63,543 as being the predicted fundraising advantage of a seat on the Ways and Means committee. The t-statistic is 4.07, which means that it’s a statistically significant relationship. Statisticians use 1.96 as the cut-off low point for clearly significant statistical relationships. Generally, a t-stat of 1.64 is considered the lower bound for  statistical significance.

The row at the bottom, “adjusted R-squared” is a measure of how much variation each model explains. The regression estimating total itemized contributions explains 20.8% of the variation across members. This means that about 79% of the variation across members is explained by factors we didn’t include in the model (such as unique member and district characteristics). The higher the R-squared, the more variation we’ve explained. The lower the R-squared, the more variables we are probably missing.

If we wanted to estimate predicted fundraising for a particular member, we first would get the baseline fundraising for each category for each member by starting at the intercept. Then we add an additional bonus for the congress we are in, multiply the number of years in the chamber by the value in the seniority row, and add an extra bonus for the majority row. Then we add the value for each committee assignment. If we are looking at a chair or a ranking member, we add an extra bonus on top of the already predicted value for being on the committee.

So, for example, if we had a fourth-term Democratic member in the 111^th Congress serving on the Ways and Means Committee, we could estimate predicted PAC contributions by starting with the intercept of $309,723, adding an extra $266,056 for the 111^th Congress, less $28,834 ($7,096 * 4 terms) for  seniority + $66,877 for being in the majority. So we are at $613,3822 in PAC contributions baseline. Now we’d add an extra $295,774 for being on Ways and Means. So the predicted PAC fundraising total would be $909,596.

Now the caveats.

These numbers measure statistical patterns, but they don’t directly show causality. These numbers tell us that members on certain committees raise more or less than their peers on other committees. But it may be the case that better fundraisers get rewarded with better committee assignments. As always, one must be careful confusing correlation with causality.

Still, there are some good reasons to infer some causal relations. One big reason is that the fundraising bonuses on the big money committees come primarily in the form of PAC contributions, which mostly come from corporations and are more likely to have committee-specific interests. Both Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce are associated with less individual fundraising than your average member. Financial Services is associated with more individual giving, which makes sense since individuals who work in the financial sector are major donors. But still, two-thirds of the Financial Services committee “bonus” comes from PAC contributions. Also, all three committees are associated with significantly more out-of-state funding than your average member.

Another way to get at causality is to estimate a time series regression, where we explain member fundraising as a function of prior fundraising efforts (controlling again for majority status, seniority, congress), and then look at the effect of committee switches on fundraising.

The results of these estimates can be found here: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Regression-2-Effects-Of-Changing-Committees-On-Can/j3sk-hyqf

These estimates do a better job of explaining variation across members (notice the higher R-squared values) because they effectively take into account the differences across members, including their district characteristics and fundraising prowess.

The only statistically significant results for changing committee assignments involve transferring to Ways and Means, Financial Services, and Energy and Commerce.

Getting on Ways and Means boosts your PAC fundraising levels by $208,315, your out-of-state itemized fundraising totals by $233,742, and your total itemized fundraising totals by $220,598, all in statistically significant ways.

Joining Financial Services produces boost of $101,695 to PAC contributions and a boost of $140,334 to your out-of-state contributions, both statistically significant.

Joining Energy and Commerce yields a statistically significant boost of $72,933 to your PAC contributions.

These results should give us even more confidence that Ways and Means, Financial Services, and Energy and Commerce provide genuine fundraising bonuses to members.

There are probably two reasons why we don’t see any statistically significant results for the effect of joining a dud fundraising committee.

One is that there are only a limited number of cases where incumbent members switch onto the dud fundraising committees, and with only a limited number of cases, it is hard to get statistical significance because it is harder to distinguish patterns from chance.

The second reason is that if everybody knows which committees are dud fundraising committees, those who join those committees are members who are probably less likely to be concerned about fundraising, perhaps because they have safe seats. Moreover, if members are joining a dud fundraising committee, it’s more likely to be from another dud fundraising committee. In this case, it’s less likely to alter fundraising.

 

Conclusion

Overall, these results confirm that some House committees are better for member fundraising than others. In particular, Ways and Means, Financial Services, and Energy and Commerce are very good fundraising committees. And for good reason: Ways and Means has jurisdiction over tax policy, Financial Services over securities and banking policy, and Energy and Commerce over energy policy. In all three policy areas, a substantial number of corporations care very much about how policy gets made, and their employees are willing to contribute substantial sums – both through their PACs and individually – to make sure that they have access.

 

Sunshine Week presents the perfect opportunity each year to recognize the importance of transparency and open government. This year, with the ever-increasing influence of often secretive super PACs in our elections, the need for transparency is even more clear.

We have an opportunity for greater disclosure right now. A new bill -- the DISCLOSE Act 2012  will, if passed by Congress, require:

• Corporations and other outside groups to stand by their campaign ads -- with their leader and top financial contributors disclosed in the ads.

• Public reporting by corporations, unions, super PACs and other outside groups to the FEC within 24 hours of making a campaign expenditure or transferring funds to other groups for campaign-related activity (of $10,000 or more).

• Corporations and other outside groups to disclose campaign-related spending to shareholders and organization members.

• Lobbyists to disclose campaign-related expenditures in conjunction with their lobbying activities.

In the wake of the two-year-old infamous Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. FEC  -- which allowed unlimited and undisclosed money to flow into our elections, an increase in new super PACs has now led to an increase in the amount of money making it’s way into our elections -- to the tune of over 74.8 million (and counting)! This is no cheap change.

Help get the word out by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Let your community know that it’s time to expose dark money behind our elections. It’s time to pass the DISCLOSE Act 2012.

Though we can see what these super PACs are spending their money on, the rules that let us see who’s giving them money are weak and don’t let us see the whole picture. Without disclosure, we can’t know if the ads we’re watching are funded by corporate VIPs with hidden agendas or everyday people like you and me.

If you want to see if your rep is a co-sponsor on the bill, look them up here and encourage them to keep up the support. If they are not co-sponsors, let them know too that it’s time to open up our government.

The bill has not yet made its way to Senate, so make sure to ask your senator to introduce a complementary bill and bring transparency into our government.

Writing a letter to the editor is easy and takes only a few minutes with our online tool -- we’ll walk you through each step. Lawmakers pay close attention to what goes on in the newspapers of their districts. A letter to the editor will help raise awareness about the need for transparency and accountability in your community. And it sends a clear message to your representative: we’re not afraid to speak out and demand transparency in our elections.

Want to learn more about the DISCLOSE Act? You can follow our updated blog posts about it here:

Yesterday, the House Commerce Committee killed an amendment to the FCC Reform Act that would have required groups airing political ads to disclose contributors of $10,000 or more as a condition for purchasing ad time.

The amendment, offered by Rep. Eshoo, is among any number of reasonable attempts to address the avalanche of dark money unleashed since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Sunlight is disappointed by the vote, however the defeat of the amendment does not have to sound the death knell for FCC disclosure. The FCC is currently drafting rules that could shine a light on some of the dark money that is behind the often negative and misleading political ads being paid for by secret special interests.

During the rulemaking process, the Commission asked for comments addressing whether the agency should require broadcasters to disclose the names of the executives behind any entity sponsoring political ads. Broadcasters have been required to collect this information for decades, and the technology is now available to include the information on a centralized database so the public may access it. There is no reason the information should remain hidden from public view.

Opponents of transparency—perhaps the powerful broadcast lobby—appear to have flexed their muscles with the members of the Commerce Committee who voted against the Eshoo amendment. The FCC, on the other hand, should be applauded for considering stronger disclosure rules. Rules must be adopted to ensure the money, interests and influence behind political ads is not hidden in shadows.

For the latest proof of the importance of money in politics, look no further than the Wednesday decision by Bob Kerrey to make a comeback bid for his old Senate seat and the excitement it is generating.

Never mind that Nebraska's one-time Democratic governor and senator has spent the last decade living in New York City's legendarily hip Greenwich Village. Never mind that he had to use his sister's address to register to vote in the state where he was born. Never mind that he hasn't been on a ballot since 1994 and will have to reintroduce himself to a new generation of Nebraskans.

He should have plenty of dough to help him do so. The one constant throughout the brainy, mercurial Kerrey's career has been his track record as a money magnet.

Sunlight's Influence Explorer shows that Kerrey raised nearly $10 million during the 12 years he was in the Senate. That's on top of the $681,000 that records on file with Nebraska's Accountability and Disclosure office show he raised for his first race, a successful 1982 campaign for governor. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1995-96, Kerrey helped rake in another $33 million for his party.

Nor did his fundraising prowess end with his political career: The New School of Social Research, which Kerrey headed from 2001 until last year, credits him with raising more than $110 million to spark a major expansion of the Manhattan-based university. Benefactors included such bold-faced names as fashion designers Donna Karan and Diane von Furstenburg and media mogul Barry Diller. Influence Explorer also shows the New School's sophistication in the ways of Washington: The university has spent nearly $4 million lobbying, and has been rewarded with some $22 million in federal grants and contracts.

Like former Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and current Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., before him, Kerrey is demonstrating the power of a proven fundraiser to displace the ambitions of lesser-known locals.

"I gave up my seat on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents based on his word," Chuck Hasselbrook, a Democrat who says he entered the Senate race only after Kerrey assured him he wouldn't, told the Christian Science Monitor.

The Nebraska race is likely to be hard-fought and expensive, and it could be key to determining whether Democrats manage to maintain control of the Senate, where they now hold a 53-47 vote edge (a margin that includes two independents, Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, and Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who caucus with the Democrats). It's not unheard-of in such circumstances for parties to turn to a familiar face with a proven track record of bringing in the bucks. In 2000, when Democratic leaders worried that then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani would enter the race for the seat of retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N,Y., Rep. Nita Lowey, a veteran Democrat from the New York City suburbs, had to give up her hopes of moving to the other side of the Capitol in favor of Clinton. The then-first lady ran her campaign for New York's Senate seat from the White House. And in 2010, when the retirement of Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., opened up an opportunity for Republicans, party leaders recruited Coats, who served in the Senate during the 1990s, over a former GOP congressman and state senator who also wanted the nomination.

Kerrey, 68, is a former Navy Seal who walks -- and sometimes jogs -- on a prosthesis, the result of losing part of his right leg to a grenade attack in Vietnam. His his war record came under a cloud, however, in 2001 when he acknowledged participating in an attack where Vietnamese civilians, many of them women and children, were killed. First elected to the Senate in 1988, Kerrey four years later launched a campaign for president. He lost the Democratic nomination to Bill Clinton in a campaign not marked by good feelings. Kerrey famously called the future president "an unusually good liar." Back in the Senate, where he won a second term in 1994, he was an early advocate for health care reform and Social Security reform. In 2000, he abruptly announced that he would not seek a third term and moved to New York to head the New School. In 2005, he briefly considered challenging Michael Bloomberg for New York City mayor.

The 2006 race for the seat that Kerrey is now seeking cost $20 million -- a figure driven up by the personal funds poured into the race by millionaire Republican candidate Pete Ricketts. Democratic incumbent Ben Nelson won, despite being outspent nearly two-to-one -- a sign that while money talks, it can only walk you so far.

(Keenan Steiner contributed reporting for this post)

     

Today, the House Committee on Financial Services held a hearing designed, it seems, to derail growing momentum in favor of the Stop Trading Congressional Knowledge Act (the STOCK Act). In response, Sunlight along with the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen and US PIRG sent a letter to all members of Congress urging them to quickly enact legislation that would clearly state that Members of Congress are prohibited from engaging in insider trading.

For years, efforts have been made to enact a version of the STOCK Act. The bill recently gained momentum when news reports disclosed the unseemly specter of congressional insider trading. Now it seems some in Congress would like to slow that train by saying a new law isn’t necessary because insider-trading laws have always applied to Congress.

That argument misses the very relevant point that whether or not current laws apply, they clearly aren’t working. As far as we know, there has never been an enforcement action against a Member of Congress for insider trading. Yet some members do remarkably well in the market.

The groups on the letter to Congress—none of whom were invited to testify today, by the way—recognize the need for strong, clear legislation that would eliminate any doubt about Congress’s obligation to abide by the same rules as the rest of us. In addition, legislation should also ensure that when Members’ engage in legal stock transactions, those are made publicly available in real time and online in a searchable database.

A law that curtails congressional self-dealing and increases transparency should not be controversial. The STOCK Act should pass.

Letter on the Need for the STOCK Act

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

The Congressional Management Foundation announced its Golden Mouse Awards for the 112th Congress on October 23. The CMF began grading congressional websites in 2001 and announces the Golden Mouse Awards biannually to honor the best. Earlier this year, we conducted an investigation evaluating congressional committee websites.

Congressional websites have improved significantly since 2009, according to the  report. The most common grade jumped from an F up to a B between the 111th and 112th congresses. However, there is still room to grow in some significant areas. According to the report, many member websites "lack basic educational and transparency features." Alternatively, while members have been quick to utilize social media tools, committees have been slower to follow suit.

The CMF found that, when searching for information on their policy positions or votes, constituents look first at their member's websites. Despite this fact, many members have websites that do not provide useful information in a transparent way. For example, more than 40% of members do not post information about their votes, sponsored, or cosponsored bills. Additionally, 67% of member websites do not provide clear information directing constituents how to contact their member with casework requests.

In contrast,  most committees provide information expected by interested users in clear and readable formats. For instance, 90% of committees provide an archive of information on their hearings, and 78% have a video webcast feature. Committee websites lacked transparency in one major area- only 16% post information on individual legislators committee votes.

When it comes to social media adoption rates, the tables are somewhat turned. Individual members have taken to social media with gusto over the past two years, while committees are trailing behind. In 2009 only 21% of member websites linked to Facebook; that number is now 81%. Meanwhile, 71% of members link to a Twitter page and CMF found that 65% actively used the platform. Committees have been slower to adopt social media, with only 40% linking to Facebook and just 31% actively using Twitter.

During our own investigation, we found that, although there is wide variation in the quality of committee sites, there are some identifiable trends.

On the whole, House committee websites were superior to Senate sites. However, there was parity in certain areas. Both chambers lagged in making legislation, amendments, and markups available on their sites. Additionally, only four committees provided forms for whistleblowers to report issues. Like CMF, we found that committee sites had been slow to adopt social media, with the House being more advanced than the Senate. On the positive side,  every committee made it possible to view hearings online, although not all provided live webcasts.

The raw data from the investigation can be accessed here.

   

A few weeks ago NPR's Planet Money team contacted us with a pretty simple inquiry: What happens at congressional fundraisers? But as their most recent podcast shows, getting to know what goes on at these events is not that simple.

Sunlight Editorial Director Bill Allison joined Planet Money reporter Alex Blumberg checking out a few fundraisers happening on a busy night in Washington, DC. Party Time indicated there were at least 20 events scheduled but gaining access was more challenging than a night club's velvet rope.

Why the secrecy and closed doors? Listen to the podcast to learn more.

And check out Party Time to know when and where Congress and the presidential candidates are fundraising. Say for instance tomorrow's Jay Z - Kanye West concert or a weekend retreat with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Have any invites to share? Send us an anonymous tip.