As of midnight last night, candidates for federal office were to have filed their campaign finance disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission. These reports contain crucial information that lets voters know which special interests, big-money lobbyists or out-of-state donors may be funding a candidate’s campaign. The reports are supposed to be public, but if you try to find Senate candidates’ reports today, you will be out of luck. Why? Because the Senate has exempted itself from filing directly with the FEC, instead using the Secretary of the Senate as an intermediary. And instead of filing their reports electronically, like House candidates and presidential candidates have been doing for years, Senators and Senate candidates mail or hand-deliver paper printouts of their electronically generated reports.

After receiving the reports, the Secretary of the Senate must scan, page by painstaking page, thousands of pages of campaign finance reports before transmitting them to the FEC. It may be days or weeks before the FEC receives the reports—longer for the ones that are mailed rather than hand delivered, as the mailed reports don’t even arrive at the Secretary of the Senate’s office until they have been processed off site.

But wait, there’s more. After it receives the scanned documents, the FEC must then spend about $450,000 in taxpayer dollars and untold hours having the records typed in, line-by-line, to the FEC’s databases. It will take at least three weeks before the information is publicly available—longer in the middle of a busy election season. The process isn’t just inefficient. It denies citizens timely access to information that can help shape and inform their opinions about their candidates and elected officials.

Senator Tester and Cochran have repeatedly introduced legislation to streamline the process and make electronic filing mandatory. This Congress, a bipartisan group of 30 senators have cosponsored S. 375, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, with many others voicing support for the measure.

Despite its overwhelming support, the bill has not become law because some in the Senate have chosen to make it a political pawn. That is why we urge every Senator who supports transparency and government efficiency, as well as every one who opposes government waste, to cosponsor the bill. Overwhelming, demonstrated support may be the best chance this common sense piece of legislation to pass.

President Obama's 2014 budget includes a Sunlight priority that won't erase the deficit, but will streamline the way that important campaign finance information becomes public. Last year, we noted that Obama had included a provision in his FY13 budget proposal that would require Senate Campaign Committees to file their campaign finance reports electronically and it appears that he's pushing the idea again this year.

Specific language can be found in a document outlining spending for "Other Independent Agencies." It is very similar to the provisions included in the FY13 request and reads:

The Budget proposes that Senate Campaign Committees be required to file campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission, which is consistent with the reporting requirements for all other Federal political committees. This measure will save at least $430,000 annually by reducing costs for manual data entry and will also promote transparency by expediting the process by which the reports are made available to the public.

The Senate has been hesitant to take this step into the 21st century, although the idea has a champion in Senator Jon Tester who introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act in the 112th Congress and again earlier this year.

Requiring the Senate to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the FEC is a simple and cost effective way to increase transparency and efficiency. Hopefully this provision will make its way into whatever budget plan successfully passes Congress.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) will introduce an amendment to create a publicly accessible online database containing all unclassified reports to Congress.  It will be offered during today's vote-o-rama, where unlimited amendments to the budget resolution being debated in the Senate are permissible.

Coburn Amendment #442 is the Senate equivalent of the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, which was re-introduced in the House earlier this week by Reps. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

This idea is not new. We've been talking about it since 2008 and have advocated for it through its subsequent introduction and consideration. It is widely-support by transparency organizations from across the political spectrum.  Senator Coburn has long understood its importance, acting as a cosponsor of the Senate version of the ACMRA introduced in the 112th Congress.

Providing online access to all Congressionally mandated reports would allow watchdogs, the public and even members of Congress to more easily understand and conduct oversight on the operations of the federal government.

We hope that the amendment is successful today and that Senator Coburn continues to work towards this important goal by introducing a Senate version of the ACMRA to the 113th Congress.

The Sunlight Foundation's Capitol Words project has finished processing Senator Rand Paul's filibuster of John Brennan's nomination to head the C.I.A. from the Congressional Record. We took the text of Sen. Paul's statements (not questions from other Senators) from the two sections of the record (filibuster start and the Unanimous Consent continuation) and created the above word cloud. Click through for the full-sized version.

Today, Senator Tester announced that once again he has introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, (not yet online) a bill that would bring the Senate into the 21^st Century by requiring senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The current filing system in place in the Senate would laughable if it weren’t so destructive to disclosure.  Senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who prints them out on reams of paper to be delivered to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. Transparency delayed is transparency denied. The Senate system is anathema to anyone who supports meaningful disclosure.

House candidates and presidential candidates, by contrast, have been electronically filing their campaign finance reports for over a decade—streamlining the process and saving taxpayer money. It is estimated that the duplicative paper filing system in place in the Senate costs up to a half a million dollars annually.

Versions of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act have been introduced with significant bipartisan support in multiple prior congresses. No Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the legislation. The only reason the bill is not law is because it has been used for partisan political squabbles.  As the Senate struggles with massive challenges facing the country, from sequestration to guns to immigration, perhaps this year Senators can finally agree to enact a bill that no one can disagree with.