Sunlight Foundation

Cry Me A River

Call the wahmbulance, some congressmen are complaining about being investigated.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are organizing a working group to gut new ethics rules that created the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The OCE was created as a semi-independent investigative body that could sift through ethics complaints and decide which ones merited investigation or review by the House Ethics Committee.

The CBC is upset that the OCE may be investigating a trip taken by some CBC members to the Caribbean that may have violated House rules preventing lawmakers from going on travel sponsored by corporations.

According to The Hill, a source states, "We might need to revisit that law," regarding the OCE. Another aide to a CBC member says, "In an environment where there’s allegations of clear criminality, investigating a trip to a Caribbean island is a bit odd ... What’s the charge, that they spent too much time at the pool? That’s ridiculous.”

Well... What's ridiculous is that this trip may have violated House rules and now you're pretending like the investigation is about nothing but pool-side, pina colada sipping.

There are House rules that prevent lawmakers from going on travel sponsored by corporations. These rules were passed in the wake of the Abramoff scandal to prevent Scottish golfing trips and other outrages that had gone on for too long. The convention that CBC members were attending, according to photographs and independent accounts, contained banners of corporate sponsors and speeches by CBC members thanking corporate sponsors. That's against the House rules.

While there might not be direct criminality involved, lawmakers can't just violate the House rules. At least they shouldn't be able to. And if you think that you should be able to, then please leave my city.

Senate Puts the Anonymity Back in Earmarks

Wondering where the Senate Defense earmarks are in EarmarkWatch.org? Though our collaborators and friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have compiled a list here, one thing you'll notice is that, unlike the House Defense earmarks contained in Earmark Watch, the Senate disclosures don't list the actual recipient of the earmark, but rather generic project names. So while we know that Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray earmarked $2 million for "U.S. Army Extended Cold Weather Clothing System [ECWCS] Hand Protection System" (gloves, presumably), we don't know who will be making those gloves, whether the glovemaker hired lobbyists or had its executives contribute to Cantwell and Murray's campaigns, or were otherwise hand-in-glove with their earmark bestowers.

That's because of a slight change in wording that was made in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, one that the Senate, apparently, prefers--and which all but does away with meaningul earmark disclosure. Read on for more details...

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DeMint Has a Point (Sort Of)

After taking over Congress last January, House Democrats passed a House rule, all by themselves, that required disclosure of earmarks. We have an analysis of the House rule here; of course, there were bumps in the road implementing it, but we're starting to see an unprecedented amount of earmark disclosure from the House. The Senate, by contrast, put its earmark disclosure measures in a bill, S. 1,, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, meaning that, until the House and President sign off on it, the Senate effectively operates under the old, nondisclosure rules (although Sen. Robert Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Appropiations Committee, has adopted his own rules; you can see here and here how Byrd's rule is working.

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