Making good on part of the House of Representative's commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk's office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity.

The Clerk is hosting the site, and the information will primarily come from the leadership, the Committee on House Administration, the Rules Committee, and the Clerk's office. The project has been driven by House Republican leaders as part of an push for transparency. Important milestones include the adoption of the new House Rules in January 2011 that gave the Committee on House Administration the power to establish standards for publishing documents online, an April 2011 letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader to the Clerk calling for better public access to House information, a Committee on House Administration hearing  in June 2011 on modernizing information delivery in the House, a December 2011 public meeting on public access to congressional information, and finally the late December adoption of online publication standards.

Today's effort focuses on House documents, but there is a similar series of requirements for committee and other documents that will be addressed as the Clerk's site is further built out. Three things strike me as particularly important for what has happened today

First, the House made a commitment to do something concrete -- publish documents online in machine-friendly formats by January 2012-- and they did that. All too often, transparency promises fall by the wayside or are beaten back by bureaucracy. This is a commitment made, and one that is being kept. (We will keep a close eye on things, just in case.)

Second, the ongoing process of releasing documents online, in real-time, and in machine-readable manner is a tremendous sea change from the slow and ponderous paper publications that are often late,  fairly difficult to use, and unfriendly to computers. PDFs, by themselves, are simply insufficient for transparency purposes, and have been for a very long time, and it's important that we're moving towards making information available in such as a way as to maximize its usefulness.

Third, the House is forging ahead the best it can. It would be ideal to have the Senate joining the House in this effort, or have legislative support agencies taking the initiative, but all too often these joint efforts result in nothing happening. It's important for everyone to make the best progress they can, and that's what's happening here.

It will be fun to see when the next shoe drops.

Are Members of Congress using inside information gathered as part of their jobs to make financial investments (and get rich...er?) That question is at the heart of yesterday's 60 Minutes report. Reporter Steve Kroft accused current House Speaker John Boehner and former speakers Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Hastert, among others, of engaging in a legal form of insider trading. (We first broke the Hastert story in 2006.)  What the story didn't explore was how transparency aided Hoover Institution research fellow Peter Schweizer in drawing these connections, and how better transparency would deter problems from arising.

Schweizer's analysis drew upon congressional financial disclosure reports, one of many ethics-related documents that the House and Senate make available to the public. While all these documents should be available online, in real-time, and in machine-readable formats, most are not.* Usually, members of the public must physically travel to the House or Senate and print out ethics documents, one page at a time -- you will not be provided an electronic copy, no matter how much you ask,  even though the documents are already digitized. In fact, we compiled the first public list of all the "publicly-available" documents from the House and Senate, with information about how to obtain the reports and what they contain. We also called for the GAO to finally live up to its statutory obligation to review whether the personal financial disclosure forms should be updated.

Looking at the financial disclosure reports, only the House publishes them online; the Senate archaically requires you to go to the Senate in person to ask for this information. If you want to analyze the Senate's financial disclosure reports, you have to re-key the data into a computer by hand; there's no database to facilitate analysis. This is equally true if you want to see which Member or senior staffer has been promised a plum job by an outside company, foreign travel expense reports, legal defense fund contributions, and more. If you're not in Washington, you'd better be willing to book a plane ride to DC; otherwise, you're out of luck.

We won't know how much effort it took to make the connection between congressional activity and investing, which formed the basis of the 60 Minutes report and Schweizer's well-timed book "Throw Them All Out," but it likely was considerable. Without better data, it is hard to tell who actually benefited from trading on inside information. We also don't know the extent to which investors mine data from capitol hill about industry activities to help make investment decisions, and we can't know that until legislation like the STOCK Act (which we wrote about here) becomes law.

But what we do know is that the House and Senate can do much more to be transparent. They need to make it easier for the public to see who is trying to influence them, how they behave while in office, and the work that they're doing. That's why we are advocating for lobbying reform, ethics reform, and a lot more Sunlight on the process.

• Update 1: These documents are not available online from the House or Senate, but some third parties, such as the Center for Responsive Politics and Legistorm, have digitized many of the documents. However, it's not always possible to access the data in bulk, and it is possible that the third parties introduced errors in the digitization process.

• Update 2: I should also mention that Sunlight gave a grant to CRP for digitization of the personal financial disclosure forms, travel disclosures, and other documents in 2007.

The 2012 campaign fundraising totals, covering January through June, proved record in some cases, with the total amount raised by candidates running for Senate being the highest amount ever reported for that time period in a non-election year at $103.1 million, according to an analysis done by the Federal Election Commission released yesterday.

The FEC’s release also highlighted a 15 percent increase in fundraising by candidates running for House seats in 2012. The total raised by candidates for the House was $182.1 million from January 1 through June 30, 2011. The total for that same time period in 2009 was $132 million. The total amount raised by all 2012 political candidates for the first half of the year is $285.2 million.

Comparing the data released by the FEC for the House to data released in 2009 shows some significant increases in funding for individual incumbent candidates as well. For instance, the first six months of 2011 House Speaker John Boehner proved fruitful as he brought in $6.4 million. During the same time period in 2009, the amount raised by his campaign was much smaller at just over $1 million.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor has also had an increase in fundraising this year compared to 2009, but it was not nearly as monumental as Boehner’s. Cantor raised $2.6 million in the first six months of this year, about $900,000 more than the same time period in 2009.

The FEC highlighted some significant increases in specific types of campaign fundraising as well. House freshmen incumbents – many originally running on the Tea Party platform -- reported raising $32 million through June 30 of this year, 34 percent more than the $9.5 million reported in 2009. The analysis also showed that contributions from individuals to House candidates increased by 21 percent, while contributions from political action committees (PACs) to House candidates increased by just three percent.

Go to the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Explorer to see some of the data analyzed by the FEC yourself. The FEC’s original press release can be found here.

By guest blogger Matthew Gerring, Sunlight Labs intern The Washington Post published an article on Wednesday about the personal financial disclosures filed by members of Congress, and the data isn't surprising — the current Congress, like the last Congress, is full of millionaires.

Aside from personal wealth, top politicians in Congress, like John Boehner, raked in millions in campaign contributions during the last election cycle. Here's a look at some of the people and companies mentioned in the article:

• John Boehner, current Speaker of the House, received $6,001,138 in contributions in the last election cycle.
• Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, received $5,557,405 in campaign contributions.
• 79% of political contributions made by Domino’s Pizza employees and political action committee went to Republicans in the 2009-10 cycle.
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi received $2,500,575 in campaign contributions in the 2009-10 cycle.
• One of Pelosi’s top contributors, E&J Gallo Winery, contributed $12,000 to Pelosi, and 75% of its employees’ and PAC’s contributions went to Democrats.
• Paul Ryan, author of the Republican’s budget plan, received $2,836,581 in contributions in 2009-10.
• House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy may have the smallest financial holdings according to the Post, at $114,00, but his fundraising was up there with the best of them — he received $2,013,573 in campaign contributions in 2009-10.

‘Influence Explored’ takes an article from the day’s headlines and exposes the influential ways of entities mentioned in the article. Names and corporations are run through Sunlight’s influence tracking tools such as Influence Explorer and Transparency Data to remind readers of the money that powers Washington.

Yesterday, Speaker Boehner said that he was open to reevaluating subsidies to oil companies. That's a bold step for a Republican legislator: GOP lawmakers receive a lot of support from the oil and gas industry. In fact, 77% of the $65 million that the industry contributed to politicians between 2009 and 2010 went to Republicans. So the Speaker deserves credit for his stated desire to "see all the facts." And we're anxious to help! Let's take a look at some of the current subsidies to oil companies.

Tax Expenditures ~ $3.96 billion in 2010

Oil companies specifically benefited from $3.96 billion in tax expenditures for 2010. Here’s a breakout of the individual tax breaks and their respective amounts:

Tax Expenditures Benefiting Oil Companies, 2010

Tax Expenditure	$ millions
Expensing of exploration and development costs, fuels	$2,040
Temporary 50% expensing for equipment used in the refining of liquid fuels	$1,140
Excess of percentage over cost depletion, fuels	$610
Amortize all geological and geophysical expenditures over 2 years	$150
Exception from passive loss limitation for working interests in oil and gas properties	$20

Source: Subsidyscope.com

As you can see, the largest tax break listed is the expensing of exploration and development costs. Essentially, this allows companies to deduct "intangible drilling costs" (such as wages or the cost of materials when constructing a well) from their taxable income immediately, rather than amortizing the costs over several years (the standard for other businesses). Most other companies are required to amortize their expenses over several years because it more accurately measures the net income for each year.

Non-Competed Contracts ~ $4 billion in 2010

The federal government contracts with oil companies to procure fuel for various branches of the government. This is not a subsidy in itself, but it can be considered a subsidy when the contracts are not fully competed. For 2010, the federal government awarded over $4 billion in non-competed contracts to companies to procure oil and petroleum.

Royalty Relief ~ $ billions

By law, the Department of Interior is required to charge royalty fees for the fair market use of public lands and goods extracted from them (typically between 12.5% and 18.75%). However, there exist special exemptions for oil and gas drilling and exploration, both on Interior land and waters in the outer continental shelf that are also managed by the Department of Interior. The reduction in royalties assessed on oil and gas extracted from government owned lands is called royalty relief. While noting the difficulty in generating an accurate estimate, the GAO estimates the cost of royalty relief is in the billions each year. Just for the deep water areas in the Gulf of Mexico, the GAO estimated $21 billion to $53 billion in losses from royalty relief between 1996 and 2000.

Cleanup Costs That Exceed the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund ~$??

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund is intended to allow the federal government to respond quickly and efficiently to oil spills. The fund is paid for by a tax on oil produced in or imported to the US. However, the fund has a $1 billion per incident cap. According to the most recent GAO report, the total estimated cost of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is in the tens of billions. To date, $629.5 million of the $1 billion cap has been paid out. If the costs exceed $1 billion, agencies may be required to use their appropriated funds or obtain supplemental funding.

Depending on your definition of subsidy, there are many other ways (less easily estimated in dollars) that the federal government subsidizes oil and gas companies. These may include research and development grants, transportation infrastructure such as pipelines or the military defense of oil shipments. Even setting aside these other possibilities, the data is in: Oil companies benefit from billions of dollars worth of subsidies every year.

Two weeks ago the House of Representatives violated a pledge made by Speaker John Boehner to provide a 72 hour window for all legislation to be viewed by the public before it is brought to the floor for debate by voting on a bill to defund National Public Radio. Today, the House majority is again violating that pledge by voting on the Government Shutdown Prevention Act.

The Government Shutdown Prevention Act, a bill that deems the budget cutting bill passed by the House earlier this year to have passed Congress without the Senate's assent, was introduced on March 30 at 1:13 pm. At the present moment, this bill has not been available for even 48 hours.

The House majority sent the bill to be approved for floor debate by the House Rules Committee under emergency rules. The NPR defunding bill was also considered by the House Rules Committee in an emergency session.

In a post detailing the 72 hour pledge breaking promise on the NPR vote I noted how the Republican majority circumvented their pledge by following a "Read the Bill" rule that they instituted at the opening of this Congress:

Earlier this year the House Republicans changed the House Rules to implement a Read the Bill rule that stating that bills must be available on three calendar days prior to consideration. Sunlight was very pleased to see the new House Rules incorporate language that strengthens the public's ability to see legislation online before votes. We've also recognized that this rule might be artfully evaded through a variety of means, one of which is the "calendar day" definition.

...

This "calendar day" issue was previously pointed out by Sunlight's Lisa Rosenberg, "the “third calendar day” yardstick for determining whether a bill is ripe for consideration could result in a bill being available for less than 72 hours. Sunlight has advocated using a “72 hour” time frame instead of three calendar days to prevent possible gamesmanship."

There still remain many other potential ways in which the current Rule and previous pledges could be subverted. Sunlight Policy Director John Wonderlich pointed these out in a post earlier this year.

This rule is clearly meant to fudge the previous promise by Speaker Boehner to provide 72 hours of public, online exposure for each bill before it is debated. In case you are wondering if Boehner made a 3 day, as opposed to a 72 hours, pledge, please watch below: There's more video here.

It's worrying that the majority would repeatedly evade a pledge that they made to the American people to make the House a more transparent body. It is especially worrying that the majority would do this on two votes that are clearly not emergencies.

How was the defunding of National Public Radio an emergency requiring the circumvention of normal Rules Committee procedures and the 72 hour pledge? The current Continuing Resolution to fund the government expires on April 8. Why can't the majority wait until Monday to vote on this bill?

The 72 hour rule is needed to give the public not only a chance to read the bills, but a chance to voice their opinion. This is especially important when bills are crafted and pushed forwards for political purposes. The public needs to be involved, but the majority is blocking that involvement for nothing other than the pursuit of quick political wins and message control. This is very disturbing.

Here is the original bill copy with time stamp in the lower left hand corner: XML_362-POST_xml

In the post below I noted that it's a bit surprising that the Read the Bill pledge was subverted by the majority not providing 72 hours of online, public review of the NPR defunding bill because of Speaker John Boehner's many public pledges that specify that 72 hour time frame.

Here's a selection of the many, many times that Speaker Boehner pledged 72 hours of public review for all bills.

Why not wait the extra 20 hours?

Yesterday the House Republicans voted on a bill to defund National Public Radio without providing 72 hours for the public to review the bill. This violates a pledge that Speaker John Boehner made repeatedly that he would require every bill to be made available for at least 72 hours online and in public.

I explained this in a post yesterday:

Earlier this year the House Republicans changed the House Rules to implement a Read the Bill rule that stating that bills must be available on three calendar days prior to consideration. Sunlight was very pleased to see the new House Rules incorporate language that strengthens the public's ability to see legislation online before votes. We've also recognized that this rule might be artfully evaded through a variety of means, one of which is the "calendar day" definition.

In the case of today's vote, the bill technically meets the House Rules as passed in January, but could, if voted on prior to a 72 hour period expiring (approximately 8 AM on Friday), violate the numerous pledges made by Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders to provide a public, 72 hour window for all legislation.

The bill was voted on yesterday afternoon and, thus, violated Boehner's pledge. To be more accurate, the pledge was violated even before the vote as the 72 hours of public review should end at the beginning of debate, which, on the NPR defunding bill, began yesterday morning.

Sunlight has previously stated our concerns about ways that the majority could circumvent this pledge and the rule, which does not mirror the pledge, implemented earlier this year. It is a bit surprising that the pledge was initially broken in this unnecessary manner, especially after Boehner being so emphatic and specific about the 72 hour time frame.

Kaplan, one of the nation's largest for-profit colleges, has hired a team of Republican lobbyists with congressional experience as the for-profit industry comes under fire from Democrats in the Senate and the Department of Education.

The team at Ogilvy Government Relations includes Wayne Berman, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Policy, Chris Giblin, former chief of staff to Rep. John Carter, Drew Maloney, former legislative director and administrative assistant to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Justin Daly, former counsel to the Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee. These four Republican lobbyists are joined by the sole Democrat listed on the lobbying registration form, Tony Bullock, former chief of staff to former Sen. Pat Moynihan.

According to lobbying contribution disclosure forms, these lobbyists have combined to contribute more than $70,000 to political campaigns and parties since 2008.

The for-profit college industry has been waging a major lobbying campaign as the Department of Education proposed new rules that would limit for-profit access to government grants and loans unless they improve their graduation and student retention rates and reduce the incidence of student loan default. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a series of hearings in 2010 on the for-profit college industry that raised the ire of industry executives.

According to a number of studies, for-profit colleges account for approximately 25 percent of all federal grants and loans and 44 percent of all student loan defaults despite accounting for between 9 and 12 percent of all college students. Education Department data from last year showed that students attending Kaplan had a 28 percent loan repayment rate. That rate is lower than the for-profit industry overall and significantly lower than the rate for both public college and private, non profit college students.

The House Republican majority has stated their support for the for-profit industry with incoming Education & the Workforce Committee chairman John Kline stating that he would not support the Education Department's regulations.

House Republicans have also stated their support for providing exemptions to for-profit colleges if they violate the 90/10 rule this year. The 90/10 rule requires for-profit colleges to obtain no more than 90 percent of their revenue from the federal government. Kaplan is one of a few for-profit schools that fears it will violate the 90/10 rule in 2011.

Aiding the for-profit schools is Speaker John Boehner's long time support of the industry, particularly during his time as chairman of the Education & the Workforce Committee. During Boehner's tenure as chairman both Congress and the George W. Bush administration--whose efforts were undertaken by former for-profit college industry lobbyists--loosened restrictions on for-profit colleges.

Kaplan's move to hire the Ogilvy team will help the for-profit college get their materials to lawmakers who are friendly and willing to step up for the industry. Kaplan is owned by the Washington Post Company.

Last year the New York Times ran an article on the corporate donations to charities associated with members of Congress. The article showed that corporate and lobbyist donations are able to flow in unlimited sums to the favored causes of specific lawmakers, including to charities bearing the name of the lawmaker. This provides another conduit for influence seeking that falls outside of this normally regulated and disclosed realm. It seems odd that members of Congress do not have to disclose on their financial disclosure reports the non-profits and charities that they are associated with.

Only three of the twenty-one lawmakers mentioned in the New York Times article actually disclosed their association with the charity or non-profit affiliated with them. A further search of contribution records found another six lawmaker affiliated nonprofits, none of which were disclosed by the affiliated lawmaker. This may be due to an oversight in financial disclosure reporting rules. The official rules state:

The identity of all positions held ... as an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee, or consultant of any corporation, company, firm, partnership, or other business enterprise, any nonprofit organization, any labor organization, or any education or other institution other than the United States. This subparagraph shall not require the reporting of positions held in any religious, social, fraternal, or political entity and positions solely of an honorary nature.

This rule only covers obvious conflicts that should be disclosed. It leaves a series of other conflicts out that the New York Times article helps to illuminate including contributions to organizations that a lawmaker founded or are run by family members. This disclosure rule should go as far as influence does by requiring the disclosure of all charities affiliated with lawmakers and their immediate family.

There is a clear connection between these charitable donations of corporations to these organizations and their attempts to gain access and influence lawmaker activity. The New York Times article quoted a spokesman for Duke Energy on his company's contributions to these charities:

Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, acknowledged that the company participates in lawmakers’ charitable events in part to get access to them and push its agenda. “We are not apologetic about it at all: it is part of our overall effort to work with policy makers,” he said. “Social settings are always a good way to get to know people.”

Lawmakers should be required to disclose nonprofits and charities that are affiliated with them even if they do not sit on the board or hold honorary titles. If companies are going out of their way to contribute and list these lawmakers as honorees then lawmakers should have to disclose these affiliations on their annual financial disclosure reports. It seems completely off-base that Rep. Jim Clyburn does not disclose his affiliation with the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation or that Rep. Nick Rahall does not disclose his relationship with the Rahall Transportation Institute.

Furthermore, lawmakers should be required to disclose the affiliations their spouse holds with nonprofits or charities. Huntington Bancshares reports a contribution of $5,000 to the Community Foundation of West Chester-Libery in honor of Rep. John Boehner. No where are we informed that Boehner's wife serves on a committee at the foundation. These kinds of relationships should be disclosed.

There is currently one way to track the contributions made by corporations and individuals to charities on behalf of members of Congress. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 required new disclosure filings regarding contributions made to lawmakers and on behalf of or in honor of lawmakers.