Late Night with Jimmy Fallon devoted a special slow jam to President Obama and super PACs with Brian Williams joining the musical stylings of the Legendary Roots Crew. The topic is nothing new to Sunlight, but we always appreciate a new format to publicize the issue and love to see more late night shows addressing the shadowy dealings of campaign finance. Follow Sunlight's Super PAC Tracker for updated filings and in the meantime, check out last night's segment:

An in-depth analysis of Obama's 2008 campaign contributors conducted by iWatch News in 2011 determined that in certain circumstances major bundlers ended up receiving appointments to key White House positions, invitations to White House events, and stimulus money awarded through contracts. This analysis required a high level of investigative journalism skill and a significant amount of time. It would not have been possible, however, without access to a number of data sources.

The iWatch analysis frequently returns to the story of Donald H. Gips, a Colorado businessman and bundler for Obama. His story provides a useful frame for illustrating the data sources that provided essential information for this piece.

Accessing Campaign Finance Data Regarding Bundlers

The article states that Gips bundled over $500,000 for Obama in 2008.  Presidential candidates are not required to report their bundlers, but both Obama and McCain chose to do so in 2008. The Center for Responsive Politics makes available the list from 2008 as well as a list of 2012 bundlers for those candidates who have chosen to disclose. While the candidate usually only discloses the name of the bundler, CRP adds value by including additional information such as the total amount contributed, the name of the bundler, the city and state, and employer. The information also contains the total amount the bundler has contributed him or herself to the specified candidate since 1990. Bundlers are additionally broken down by industry. A search for Gips shows that he bundled over $500,000 in 2008 and has individually donated $32,391 since 1990.

While presidential candidates only disclose bundlers voluntarily, bundler information for candidate committees, leadership PACs, and political party committees is required to be disclosed by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. Bundler information for these entities can be found using the Federal Election Commission website. In addition, Sunlight's Influence Explorer also provides bundler information for registered lobbyists and lobbying firms in a searchable and user-friendly format.

Monitoring Staff Changes in the White House

After Obama won the election, the article states that Gips was put in charge of hiring in the White House and subsequently appointed as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. The White House provides a searchable database of nominations and appointments that indicates the name of the nominee, the position and agency, the formal nomination date, and the date and result of the confirmation vote. Gips does not appear in that list, as his position did not require him to be appointed. A press release from Change.gov, Obama's transition website, however, lists Gips among several other staff announcements. The U.S. Department of State provides a list of embassies, which can be used to find information about American consulates around the world, including the name of the current ambassador.

Tracking Stimulus Funds

The article points out that Level 3 Communications LLC, where Gips was formerly vice president, was later the recipient of $13.8 million in stimulus funds. Information regarding the recipients of stimulus funds is available from three places:

• Information regarding stimulus funds is available from Recovery.gov. Level 3 EON, a subsidiary of Level 3 Communications, appears as having received $13.7 million in six awards.
• You can find information about the stimulus as well as all contracts and grants data on USASpending.gov. A search on this site shows that Level 3 Communications received just under $80,000 in awards from the Department of Defense and the Department of Agriculture.
• Our Influence Explorer also provides contract data in a more user-friendly format.

Viewing White House Visitors

The article also discusses bundlers receiving access to the White House, such as invitations to events or meetings. The Obama White House has voluntarily chosen to disclose the security records that detail those who enter the White House. These Visitor Logs have been criticized for a lack of accuracy and completeness, but can be valuable for use in analyses such as the iWatch report. The records show 18 visits by Gips to the White House between August 17, 2009 and April 1, 2011. Among the 18 are two trips to see the president and various trips to other White House staff such as Jenny Cizner, who works in the Office of Presidential Personnel, and Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to the president.

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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.

Byron Tau makes a great point in Politico: Obama's reversal on super PACs returns "to a system where corporate donors, unions and other wealthy individuals are able to pay big money for access to policymakers, lawmakers and key administration aides."

The President's announcement not only opened the door to cabinet members and top White House staff headlining fundraisers for unlimited checks, it announced with certainty that they would be doing so:

Senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. While campaign officials may be appearing at events to amplify our message, these folks won't be soliciting contributions for Priorities USA.

That might take a bit of thought to fully digest. We often assume that the laws structuring the Executive Branch generally protect merit and official work from being polluted by inappropriate political activity. But this announcement changes the stakes significantly.

There's a huge difference between regular fundraisers and super PAC events. Obama announced that White House Officials and Cabinet officials will be appearing at events "to amplify our message." "Amplify our message" means raise money, and at these events, there is literally no limit to the money. Whether or not top officials are soliciting the checks or not is beside the point. Some of the most powerful officials in our government are selling their time to the highest bidder, and, as things stand now, the public isn't even able to know about their meetings.

Cabinet secretaries have, in many ways, far more power than individual Members of Congress. Laws often give them broad, unilateral discretion in carrying out the work of the country, making decisions that affect everyone's business in profound ways. Of course, that fact is not lost on moneyed interests, who are willing to pay dearly to move policies even the slightest bit in any direction.

Unlimited checks are now going to upset that balance. Top administration officials are going to advertise their attendance at super PAC (Priorities USA) events, to bring in as much money for them as possible. The Obama announcement wasn't about getting out a message, it was about raising money. And we shouldn't be naive about why top officials are attending fundraisers either -- their attention is for sale to the highest bidder.

And the public has no way of knowing whether or when top White House officials are attending these fundraisers. If the transportation secretary attends an event that people have given $200,000 each to attend, shouldn't we know that? Especially this administration, that prides itself on openness, should recognize that the public needs to know whether and how its top officials are involved in these unlimited-funds fundraisers.

The White House likes to pride itself on saying they released the visitor logs. But getting into the White House is free. If someone pays a million dollars for access to the Secretary of State, then we really need to know about it.

So what happens next? Will this announcement from the President be accepted as sufficient, especially when his likely rivals aren't even disclosing their bundlers?

If the President is going to let his cabinet be involved in raising huge sums of money from individual contributors, he should at least make that process transparent. The President should lean on Priorities USA, who should disclose top officials' attendance at fundraisers. He should also require White House officials and Cabinet Secretaries to disclose their attendance at fundraisers somewhere as part of their schedule, as the President himself does (see "campaign activity"). The Hatch Act may create some difficulties in finding the right mechanism for this disclosure, but we need a better answer than total secrecy.

Because under the system we have now, the country's most powerful officials have an incentive to precede every official action with a meeting of the most well-heeled donors who are likely to be affected. If cabinet officials attend unlimited fundraisers, every act of their work becomes a potential hook for juicing donors. The very least we can do is make it possible for the public to understand how top officials are involved with these fundraisers.

Without public disclosure of cabinet and White House officials' involvement in unlimited fundraisers, who gets to define acceptable cabinet-level involvement in fundraising? At its best, cabinet officers all get a new distraction to their duties, at its worst, the executive branch itself becomes an extension of the Presidential dark money machine.

Last night's announcement came as no surprise -- that the President would formally align himself with super PAC run by former White House staffers.  The corrupting influence of money in politics, according to the President's public persona, is a threat wielded by rank-and-file lobbyists and insider trading. It's been about a year since the post Citizens United President Obama, who railed against the threat of dark money in the face of campaign finance regulation.

Messina's announcement did make one helpful clarification -- that the President still supports having a better disclosure law for outside spending. If that's true, he sure has a funny way of showing it. A State of the Union that doesn't even acknowledge that the floodgates have been opened, and continues to paint lobbyists as the problem (while continuing to accept bundled checks from their bosses.)

Now we know why disclosure and reform were absent -- they've been jettisoned, relegated to an awkward reassuring line in the announcement that the biggest checks are now welcome, despite the President's persistent warnings throughout 2010 that we should make no mistake in remembering how unlimited, often secret donations affect public service. Descriptive rhetoric was apparently insufficient, and thanks to Republican obstruction in the Senate (and absolute apathy towards the issue on their own) we'll get to live through the dark money arms race, rather than imagining it.

The announcement suggests that the President negotiated with the super PAC, and that his involvement is predicated on disclosure that meets the standard set by the law. That's a pretty low standard, since it's the law, and since it's the same law that Obama says he's committed to (silently) changing.

We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.

"As required by law" may as well be written "quarterly, unreliably, and in a way that still permits anonymity". The technically legal presented as rigorously ethical. "We'll follow the law I railed against as ineffective" might be a better paraphrase.

The partisan lines around campaign finance disclosure are about to get rearranged, and it's unlikely that they'll become a more productive force for reliable disclosure, especially if Obama continues to use disclosure as a rhetorical shield (through the visitor logs) and especially if the partisan logic of unilateral disarmament continues to obscure the thousand other choices about transparency and accountability that are involved in creating a Presidential dark money machine.

 

Tonight's State of the Union Address raised even less transparency issues than we expected. (See the text at the end of this post.)

President Obama called for a ban on insider trading in Congress, and proposes to ban lobbyists from bundling contributions, and to ban bundlers from lobbying.

The insider trading ban is a proposal Sunlight has supported, in the form of the STOCK Act, despite some initial misgivings. Congress should create clarity about self-dealing and insider trading, and the President is right to call on Congress to address this issue.

When Obama raised the issue of money in politics in his speech, though, he raises the "corrosive influence of money in politics." As wrong as insider trading may be, money in politics isn't about self-dealing. Obama is closer to hitting the mark in raising the issue of bundlers, but unfortunately raises a proposal that's unlikely to get discussed beyond tomorrow. A ban on lobbying or contributing to campaigns is unlikely to pass Congress, and unlikely to pass muster with the courts.  Even if it did, it would do little to mitigate the "corrosive influence of money in politics", since bundlers are often just the bag men operating at others' behest. If you're not getting the Chris Dodds of the world, your lobbying reform plan is probably aiming a little too low.

It's not clear why Obama is suddenly more interested in bundlers than say, lobbying disclosure (last year's lobbying SOTU provision), although it's possible that Obama is raising it because it will become a campaign issue, as Republican candidates have yet to release information about bundlers supporting them, as Obama has.

But this is still disappointing, since it again shows Obama relying on a flawed statutory definition of lobbyist in order to appear opposed to special interests, without actually having to do much.

Worse, though, than the lackluster vision for lobbying reform, is what's entirely missing from the State of the Union: any mention of the flood of dark money flowing into our elections. As I noted earlier today, Obama spent most of 2010 railing against the Citizens United decision -- warning us of the dangers of unlimited and secret contributions, and pushing for a legislative fix.

Since Republicans have blocked that effort, and former White House staffers started a super PAC to help Obama's re-election bid, Obama has almost completely ignored the issue. It's apparently too politically awkward to address when he's the beneficiary of all that dark money he spent 2010 warning us about.

It's good to have a President willing to raise transparency and money in politics in the State of the Union. But when insider trading and an ill-fated lunge at bundlers are all the vision he has to offer, we have to wonder whether Obama sees his old transparency platform as a political liability, rather than a vision to be perfected and implemented.

 

Speech Excerpt:

Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics.  So together, let’s take some steps to fix that.  Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow.  Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.  Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa – an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington. Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days.  A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything – even routine business – passed through the Senate.  Neither party has been blameless in these tactics.  Now both parties should put an end to it.  For starters, I ask the Senate to pass a rule that all judicial and public service nominations receive a simple up or down vote within 90 days.

Tonight, President Obama will deliver his fourth State of the Union address, and we'll be watching to see how his reform and transparency ambitions fit within this most public description of the President's priorities.* In an election year when an anti-Washington campaign theme will still be required, Obama may continue to cast his transparency work as a list of achievements, rather than an affirmative vision for accountable government.

Here are some themes from Obama's (first) campaign, his Presidency, and previous State of the Union addresses, that could be rejuvinated tonight:

Campaign Finance Transparency:

As we noted last year, Obama directly confronted the Supreme Court Justices in 2010 (shortly after the Citizens United decision), and then avoided campaign finance transparency altogether in 2011. The 2012 State of the Union could see Obama revive the issue from the bully pulpit. Almost nothing was done by Congress during 2011, a year when Congress failed at even defending a draft Executive Order that the President requiring disclosure of political giving from government contractors. The issue is still rife for Presidential engagement, though -- people hate the Citizens United decision, and it should be easy to rail against negative ads and dark money in our elections.

The issue could be awkward for Obama, whose former staffers started their own super PAC to aid in his re-election. Even if Obama and his party are to be the beneficiaries of the often secret, unlimited contributions they have warned us about in the past, the President still has a responsibility to push the issue.

Lobbying Disclosure

Obama loves to rail against lobbyists, and they've been a staple of previous campaign rhethoric, SOTU addresses, and White House policies. Lobbying disclosure and lobbyists will likely come up again this year, especially as cashing in on public service has become a disputed theme in the Republican presidential contest. We'll be watching to see whether Obama articulates any kind of affirmative vision for lobbying disclosure, or whether he adopts a "we already did that" posture like he did last year.

The White House has certainly done a great deal on lobbying disclosure, but their work too often relies on the flawed statutory definition of a lobbyist, which is weak, easily evaded, and fails for the most important of influencers.  An affirmative vision for reform is necessary.

Earmarks

Obama pushed for Earmark disclosure in the 2010 SOTU, and then issued a flat veto threat in 2011.  Unfortunately, neither approach has worked, and the supposed ban has made earmark requests a dark art, rather than the subject of public debate. The White House has been reportedly circulating a draft EO on earmark request disclosure, which Sunlight has pushed for extensively. Today would be a great day to issue an updated Executive Order, to protect merit in spending decisions, and keep Members of Congress from strongarming agencies into supporting their pet projects, while often pretending to be opposed to money from Washington.

Working with Congress

After the last year of Continuing Resolutions, near government shutdowns, the debt limit fight, and the supercommittee, watching the heads of divided government share a dais should be entertaining. Political gamesmanship has led the leaders of both parties to break campaign promises (72 hours for all bills, or "end[ing] the practice of writing legislation behind closed doors").

I don't expect Obama to raise the bar on negotiating with Congress, but he should. The frustrated-with-Washington undercurrent is about a variety of different things, and party leaders' tendency to choose each other over the public is near the top of the list. The reset button needs to be pushed for how party leaders approach divided government. The political moment of the State of the Union probably is an insufficient occasion to force such a reconsideration.

Wild Cards

If Obama wants to discuss transparency in his SOTU, there are a variety of other issues he could address in his speech. He could run through the oft-recited litany of White House achievements, like the Open Government Directive, Data.gov, the visitor logs, the Open Government Partership, and while they each have their failings, they're still successes the White House should highlight.

National Security secrecy, transparency in the finance sector, and the ongoing struggle to strengthen the FOIA could all come up in the speech as well.

We'll be watching, and have reactions after the address.

*Update: please join us at SunlightLive.com for our live coverage beginning at 9 pm ET.

In addition to an analysis of who gets paid what, the news reports highlighted the fact that the reports are now provided digitally.

These staff salary reports are valuable oversight tools, but they do not include information such as assets, gifts, or travel payment. For top level executive branch staff, that information is available in the staff personal financial disclosures, which are available upon request through an online portal created by the Obama Administration. While lower level staff do submit reports as well, these are not publicly available.

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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.

Throughout the last year, we've repeatedly pointed out that Speaker Boehner repeatedly pledged to put all bills online for 72 hours before they're voted on, reflecting Sunlight's call and the ReadtheBill.org campaign.

Boehner's pledge was unambiguous and repeated often -- all non emergency bills for 72 hours.  Unfortuantely, this has become a pledge that has been broken often, most recently last week with the bills rushed through the House.

For easier reference, here are the commitments on video, edited into one shorter clip.

These commitments matter. Remember when Republicans derided Pelosi for the healthcare bill, and claimed that bills were being "rammed down" their throats? Similarly, remember when (mostly) Democrats were outraged that the PATRIOT Act wasn't read before it was passed?

When we're pushing for important transparency reforms, like having all bills online for 72 hours before floor consideration, the minority party is often a natural ally. Each time the majority changes hands, there's usually a rush to reform processes, and promises to run a more accountable ship. Of course, many of these promises are kept, and we make progress.

But the toughest promises to keep are often the most important, and this Congress has a very poor track record on legislative secrecy. When the most important bills are written by a tiny number of negotiators, and then foisted on the rest of Congress at the eleventh hour, we can expect dismal approval ratings and mistrust to rule the day.

While such discord in Congress is more likely under divided government like we've got now, perhaps Boehner (and Obama) should revisit the visions they set for their current roles before they began -- Obama on Change.gov, and Boehner in the Pledge to America.

They should remember that when they run up to the last possible second to negotiate deals between party leaders, it's not a zero sum competition. It's not whether Republicans or Democrats gain ground, or are seen as taking the more reasonable position. When the 72 hour expectation is flaunted, our trust in government suffers, as does our sense of merit in policymaking, and our sense of self governance.

Leaders from both parties have largely turned their backs on transparency in policymaking. Whether it's the perceived necessity of SuperPACS, or the acceptance of the ridiculous secrecy of the SuperCommittee, neither party has found solid ground to discuss transparent process.

Let's hope they revisit their past rhetoric, because without solid footing, we'll just keep sliding downhill.

Having legislation that is meaningfully public isn't a luxury, it's a requirement. A closed Congress is an abused process. Our leaders should remind themselves of the times they've agreed with that sentiment.

There are almost 27,000 people—or 1/100th of one percent of the United States population—who spent more than $10,000 to influence elections during the 2010 election cycle.

The top 10 people from this elite class of donors together spent more than $23 million on the last election. The majority of that money went to Super PACs used for independent expenditures. Eight contributed their money exclusively to Republican groups and candidates; two contributed exclusively to Democratic groups and candidates.

In total, this tiny group of relatively unknown individuals was responsible for $774 million of the $3.2 billion that poured into the hotly contested mid-term elections. That money went not only to candidate campaigns and political action committees, but to Super PACs, officially known as “independent expenditure-only committees.” After the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United and the Federal Election Commission’s two advisory opinions that followed, individuals and corporations effectively have unlimited giving potential. By giving to Super PACs, they can bypass traditional giving limits.

The group that benefited most from the top 10 mega-donors largesse: American Crossroads. That Super PAC received millions of dollars from seven of the top donors, and $7 million from just one donor, Bob Perry.

Here’s a look at who’s who among America’s top 10 most influential givers:

1. Bob Perry is the CEO of Perry Homes. Perry has been influential in politics and a prominent donor for a number of years. In 2004, he gave $8 million to a number of nonprofit political groups known as 527 committees. Most notably, $4.4 million of that money went to the political group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which opposed Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid. During the 2010 election cycle, Perry donated $7.3 million to political efforts. All but a small portion of his money for the 2010 election went to American Crossroads, a group cofounded by former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

2. Wayne Hughes, owner and chairman of Public Storage, Inc. According to disclosures, Hughes gave a total of $3.28 million to conservative candidates and committees, with $3.25 million going to American Crossroads. Hughes also gave $4,800 to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

3. Fred Eshelman is the CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development. Eshelman spent $3 million in 2010 funding his own group, RightChange. RightChange registered with the FEC as a Super PAC and spent those millions of dollars to defeat Democratic candidates including Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington.

4. Robert Rowling, CEO and Chairman of TRT Holdings, a holding company that owns Golds Gyms and Omni Hotels as well as oil and gas interests. Rowling spent $2.59 million during the last election on conservative efforts. He gave $2.5 million of that money to American Crossroads.

5. Donald Sussman is the Chairman of the holding company Paloma Partners. Sussman, who earlier this year married Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, gave $1.26 million in 2010 to Democratic candidates. He has also funded a group called the Democracy Fund, a separate but predecessor organization to the United Republic Action Fund. Both of these groups have been affiliated with United Republic, and both have been dissolved.* Sussman gave a little more than $750,000 to the Super PAC Women Vote! and its parent organization Emily’s List. Those two organizations support pro-choice female political candidates.

6. John Ricketts is the founder of TD Ameritrade and still a board member there. In 2010, his total political contributions were $1.25 million. He gave to a variety of Republican candidates, including House Speaker John Boehner.

7. Jerry Perenchio is the CEO of the investment firm Chartwell Partners and former owner of the Spanish-speaking television network Univision. In 2010, he gave $1.12 million to conservative candidates and groups, including $1 million to American Crossroads.

8. Trevor Rees-Jones is the president of Chief Oil & Gas. In 2010, he gave $1.1 million to Republican efforts. $1,000,000 of that was given to American Crossroads.

9. Rachel Hunter is the Treasurer for the organization Media Matters and an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune. She’s related to Penny Pritzker who was the national finance chairwoman of the Obama campaign in 2008. In 2010, Hunter gave more than $1 million to democratic groups and candidates. The bulk of that money went to the 527 organization, Bring Ohio Back.

10. John Childs is on the Board of Directors for Club for Growth and is the founder of JW Childs Assoc., a private equity firm. In 2010, he gave a total $923,000 to Super PACs supporting Republicans and to Republican candidates directly. He gave $100,000 of that money to American Crossroads and $650,000 to his own group, Club for Growth.

For a full list of the top donors for 2010, see the embedded spreadsheet below.

Also, as a disclaimer, we think it is important to note that there are funders of the Sunlight Foundation on this list. For example, David Bonderman and Marjorie Roswell are numbers 9 and 103 on the list and have donated to the Sunlight Foundation. Additionally, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, is 134th on the list. Open Society Foundations has provided grant support to Sunlight.

*Based on inaccurate information received from a source at United Republic, we originally reported incorrectly that Donald Sussman is a funder of that organization.