In the first two months of 2011 groups associated with a coalition opposing the implementation of new rules for debit “interchange” fees that banks charge to businesses had already contributed over $500,000 in political action committee money to dozens of lawmakers, including backers of a bill that would delay the rules from going into effect.

The Electronic Payments Coalition is opposing a new rule proposed by the Federal Reserve as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill that would cap debit “interchange” fees at 12 cents per transaction. This amounts to a more than seventy percent reduction in cost per transaction.

Interchange fees have become an increasing profit center for banks and credit network companies. In the past, credit networks like Visa and MasterCard have set the fees, while the banks issuing cards reaped the profits, which topped $45 billion in recent years. Electronic network operators like Visa and MasterCard gain business by setting higher fees, which then entice banks to issue more cards on their respective networks so that banks can profit from the fees.

It is no surprise then that the coalition opposing limits on interchange fees consists of the network providers, the biggest banks, and their trade groups. Credit unions and smaller community banks have also joined the coalition. These smaller, more locally focused banks fear that the rule may affect their much smaller profits and benefit the bigger banks that can weather a haircut over interchange fees. This is despite the fact that the rule applies only to fees paid to banks with profits of $10 billion or more.

The majority of the PAC contributions flowing to lawmakers in the early months of 2011 have come from the trade companies associated with the credit unions and community bankers. The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) contributed $146,500 and the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA) contributed $163,500 to lawmakers. This accounts for more than half of all the PAC contributions to lawmakers.

The Huffington Post’s Zach Carter explained that the ICBA has a direct stake in the interchange fee rules as the trade group issues its own debit card and rakes in profits from the interchange fees charged to merchants.

In March Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., introduced the Debit Interchange Fee Study Act, a bill to delay the implementation of the new rules for one year while the Fed conducts a further study of their impact. In the two months preceding the introduction of the bill Tester received $9,500 in PAC contributions from five of the twenty biggest members of the coalition. Tester is the fourth highest recipient of Electronic Payments Coalition PAC money among senators.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., is the top recipient of money from top coalition members in the Senate. Carper, an original cosponsor of Tester’s bill, received $13,000 over January and February. Carper is known as a bank friendly Democrat as his home state of Delaware is home to many banks taking advantage of the state’s low tax rates.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., introduced an identical bill in the House of Representatives. Capito, the Chair of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, received $5,000 from coalition members in the first two months of the year. The top recipient of PAC money from coalition members was House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala. Bachus, an opponent of the Dodd-Frank law, received $71,000 in contributions from coalition members in January and February. Bachus explained his opposition to the fee rules in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, "Hastily written rules may end up doing more harm than good to consumers and have negative effects on competition in the marketplace." A previous Sunlight Foundation report showed that Bachus received more than sixty percent of his campaign contributions from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector.

The other top recipients include party leaders like Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy; key committee members such as, Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and Financial Services Committee members Patrick McHenry and Steve Stivers.

Already in 2011 coalition members are increasing their lobbying presence as the campaign against the debit fee rules ramps up. The major coalition partners hired twenty-four lobbying firms in 2010 that listed lobbying on the interchange fee rule in their disclosure forms. Eighteen of those firms were registered with the two major credit network companies, MasterCard and Visa.

These firms include some of the biggest in Washington including Akin Gump, Ogilvy Government Relations, Quinn Gillespie, Sidley Austin, and Williams and Jensen.

Sixty-eight of the seventy-nine lobbyists for these eighteen firms registered with Visa or MasterCard previously worked in government, according to data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Former Reps. Dick Gephardt, Donald Sundquist, and Robert Walker are all registered with Visa. MasterCard retains the law firm of Clark Lytle & Geduldig, which is also registered to lobby for the Electronic Payments Association, the American Bankers Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable. One of the firm’s partners, Sam Geduldig, is a former senior staffer on the House Financial Services Committee.

Visa has continued to beef up their lobbying practice with two new registrations this year. The company hired FIRST Group in January and Hollier & Associates on the first of April.

The Federal Reserve stated recently that it will fail to meet the April 21 deadline to issue the new rules due to the 11,000 comments from the public on the rules.

Senator Jon Tester introduced the Public Online Information Act (POIA) last week in the U.S. Senate, joining Representative Steve Israel who introduced virtually identical legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives in March. This is good legislation that would significantly improve government transparency. I'm going to unpack what it does, how it works, and clear up some misconceptions along the way.

The idea at the heart of POIA is very simple: public information should be available online. To say it a different way, information held by the government, required by law or custom to be available to the public, should be published on the Internet. It should be done so in a timely fashion, in user friendly-formats, and at no cost. Doing so would empower citizens to hold their government accountable, help government agencies collaborate, and contribute to economic growth.

Because the federal government has such a vast repository of public information, and that information is spread out among the 3 branches, POIA takes a very pragmatic approach to moving this information online.

It brings the 3 branches of government together to figure out how to best meet the public's demand for information. It does so in an advisory committee whose mission is to promote best practices, government coordination, and the use of modern technology. This alone is newsworthy, as nothing like it currently exists. The legislation goes even further.

POIA requires executive branch agencies to publish public information on the Internet subject to limited, commonsense exceptions. It pushes the government to adopt the presumption of openness and transparency. It requires the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and CIOs at independent agencies, to craft implementing regulations. POIA also grants the public a limited private right of action, similar to that available under FOIA, to make sure the government lives up to its transparency obligations.

Because the government's repository of information is so vast, POIA mandatory online publication requirement is limited in four major ways.

First, POIA applies only to the Executive Branch. The vast majority of public information is held by the executive branch, which is the most sophisticated branch of government in terms of putting information online. It is a good place to start. Successful lessons should be applied to the other two branches.

Second, POIA applies prospectively -- only public records generated, updated, or released after its enactment must be published online. Trying to address over 230 years of backlogged records all at once would drown this effort before it truly gets started. The National Archives has been working on this issue for years; that is a problem best addressed separately. Because most government records are now created in electronic formats, it should be comparatively easy to make them available online when compared to 100-year-old documents.

Third, POIA has a sunrise provision -- Internet disclosure of public records becomes mandatory 3 years after enactment. This gives agencies time to prepare how they will make information available online, and build the necessary support systems.

Fourth, POIA has content-based exemptions. POIA allows agencies to incorporate the Freedom of Information Act's exemptions, which apply to how agencies make information available to the public, into their rules governing how they make public information available online. Those exceptions include classified information, internal personnel rules, privileged or confidential trade secrets and commercial or financial information, information used for certain law enforcement purposes, and others.

In addition, there is an additional narrow exception to online publication that can only be granted on a case-by-case basis by the relevant administrator. The need for this exception arises from the fact that no one can definitely say whether the FOIA exemptions, which apply to how information is made available to the public, perfectly cover all instances of harm that would arise were certain information to be made available online. As a result, agencies can invoke this additional exception when there is “clear and convincing evidence” it is necessary, but they must show “the harm caused by disclosure significantly outweighs the public interest” in online publication.

Combined with the newly created right for a dissatisfied requester to sue for the information to be made available online, agency officials who are deciding whether to grant an additional exception to online publication will know that both the agency's lawyers and federal courts will be looking over their shoulders. They will have a strong incentive to keep these exceptions narrow and rare. Because these documents are already available to the public, there will be no secrets as to what the government chooses not to make available online.

In the rare instances where the government withholds information, it must indicate that it has done so. In addition, agency Inspector Generals must periodically review agency compliance with POIA, providing another nudge towards openness.

Representative Israel and Senator Tester have performed the heavy lifting in drafting and introducing the Public Online Information Act. No other transparency legislation so dramatically shifts the presumption from government secrecy to government openness with respect to making public documents available to the American people. Not since FOIA have the American people been given a broad right to make sure that their government's transparency policies work for them. POIA is a tremendous step forward. I hope that POIA gets the full hearing that it deserves. More information is available at thePOIA.org.

In January of 2007, freshman Democratic congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand became the first member of the House of Representatives to post her daily schedule on her official web site, a historic step for transparency in Congress. At the time, many feared that this level of transparency would harm her reelection prospects in a mostly Republican district. Those fears turned out to be wrong. Last night, every non-retiring candidate posting their daily schedule online was reelected to Congress, proving that transparency does not harm electoral prospects.

Since Rep. Gillibrand’s daily schedule went online, eight other lawmakers (including Sen. Jon Tester, the first senator to post a daily schedule) began posting daily schedules - you can view a map of their meetings here. They include Reps. John Doolittle, Dennis Rehberg, Kathy Castor, Jan Schakowsky, and John Yarmuth and Sens. Tester, Max Baucus, and Bill Nelson. Of these lawmakers, Rep. Doolittle retired and Sens. Tester and Nelson were not up for reelection. Reps. Rehberg, Castor, Schakowsky, and Yarmuth and Sen. Baucus all joined Rep. Gillibrand in winning reelection.

From her first day, Rep. Gillibrand has been a leader on operating a unilaterally transparent congressional office. Aside from posting her daily schedule, she was among the first lawmakers to post on her web site a list of her earmark requests and her personal financial disclosure. Since then, unilateral transparency (the disclosure of information not required by laws or congressional rules) has become much more prevalent throughout the House and Senate.

Today, over forty lawmakers disclose their earmark requests to some degree, while dozens more provide some lesser form of earmark disclosure. Others post their personal financial disclosures and travel reports.

The movement towards transparency continues unabated. The proven ability of transparent lawmakers to win reelection provides further space for more lawmakers to operate in an open and transparent manner.