As expected, the Senate passed a watered-down version of the STOCK Act today. We are glad to see new rules banning insider trading by MOCs. It is unseemly, not to mention unfair, for our elected officials to have a financial advantage based on inside information they have as a result of their positions. We hope the new rules are vigorously enforced.

Unfortunately, to pass any bill at all, the Senate decided it needed to drop language that would regulate shady political intelligence firms—groups that use their connections with congressional insiders to get information that they then use to make decisions about investments in the stock market. In February, by a vote of 96-3, the Senate passed a bill that would have called for disclosure by these groups. It’s disappointing that this important reform measure will not become law when the President signs STOCK Act.

The good news is that the issue isn’t dead. We understand that Senators Gillibrand and Grassley, along with a number of others from both sides of the aisle, plan to introduce a bill that would require disclosure by political intelligence firms. (Reps Walz and Slaughter have already introduced similar legislation, the Restore Public Trust Act, in the House.) The same 96 Senators who supported the original STOCK Act should support the new bill, and we will encourage them to do so. No one should be able to trade on their connections with members of Congress to gain an unfair advantage in stock market.

On the eve of the midterm elections and with the 111^th Congress all but wrapped up with its business, Sunlight has been brainstorming a list of bipartisan, “low-hanging fruit” of transparency ideas that the House and Senate can hit the ground running with as soon as they come back into session next year. One of those proposals is to make all amendments filed in the Senate immediately available to the public online.

The American public has the right to know what their elected officials are debating and voting on in Congress. However, as the current process stands, Senators and their staff are granted privileged access to information about some amendments while the general public is kept locked out.

Amendments are often filed to bills during debate on the Senate floor. While these amendments are available for immediate internal Senate review, the public often must wait until the amendments are published in The Congressional Record the next day to see just what they do to the legislation. In a lot of cases, the Senate may have already voted on one of these amendments the day before -- in a way, sidestepping public scrutiny. Whether the change is an addition of a single word or a sweeping manager's amendment that rewrites large sections of a bill, this presents a missed opportunity for constituents to review the amendment language and contact their representatives with any concerns.

Conversely, the Senate may also end up voting on an amendment that was filed and printed days earlier in The Congressional Record, which makes the language of the amendment difficult to find.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a resolution to address this very issue in June of this year without much fanfare or attention from the press. But quiet as its introduction was, the resolution's impact is significant in that it would bring the Senate in line with policies already long in place in the House.

Senator Grassley’s resolution mirrors larger reform efforts to ensure underlying legislation is made available to Congress and the public for a reasonable amount of time before it is voted on. It stands to reason that the amendment process should be made as transparent as possible as well. And, like the 72 hour rule that Sunlight has continually pushed for, the Senate could act proactively on revising its amendment process by enshrining this change in any new rules package it adopts for the 112th Congress. Whether as a stand-alone bill or incorporated as a rule, Senator Grassley's proposal is an easy step in the direction of a more transparent and accountable Senate.

Sen. Charles Grassley is diving into the Jonathan Gruber scandal by asking the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to "disclose federal contracts of individuals invited to testify before Congress on healthcare reform." I understand the political motivation behind this, but we could actually take this issue seriously. This proposal could, and should, go much further. So here's a thought experiment and a proposal:

With some serious caveats, all witnesses before congressional committees should be required to disclose contracts, grants and subsidies, both federal and state, that they or their business receive along with any connection, through business or finance, that they have with any sitting member of the committee. Witnesses should also have to disclose whether they are a registered lobbyist and what contributions they have made to committee members. These disclosures should be made in a simple form and then disclosed on the overseeing committee's Web site prior to the committee hearing.

Grassley's concern comes from the case of Jonathan Gruber, a well-respected MIT professor and voice on health care reform, who was revealed to have been given a nearly $400,000 from HHS to consult on the President's health care proposal. This, all the while, acting as a source to many journalists, appearing on television, writing in newspapers and having his research heavily cited in support of the Senate/White House health care bill. Gruber also appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on May 12, 2009 as a witness.

Gruber obviously isn't the only one who is guilty of this kind of non-disclosure. There are likely numerous cases of executives, employees, lobbyists and experts paraded before congressional committees with some kind of undisclosed conflict of interest or connection.

In one case that went before the Ethics Committee, only to be rejected, Rep. Sam Graves invited his wife's business associate to testify before a congressional hearing. While Graves ran this invitation by the Ethics Committee beforehand and the Ethics Committee dismissed the charges, this association and potential conflict of interest was not disclosed to the public.

It is likely that some committees already require witnesses to fill out similar forms to the ones I am proposing. These are, however, not made available to the public. Sunlight supports the online posting of all documents submitted to committees as they relate to hearings.

Now, as to the caveats for any policy resembling the one I just described. First, there would obviously be certain whistleblower protections. Second, if a conflict undermined national security, in nearly all cases, this could remain undisclosed. Third, all personal identify information -- address, etc... -- would not be made publicly available.

Please tell me in the comments how this could be better or rip me apart for proposing this policy.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this past week:

Federal law prohibits lobbyists and those that hire them from giving gifts or campaign contributions to congressional lawmakers. No such law exists prohibiting them from spending unlimited amounts to honor lawmakers or contributing to non-profits connected to them. Quite a limitation on the distinction, if you ask me. However, Congress passed ethics rules in 2007 requiring for the first time that lobbyists must report all such payments. On Monday, USA Today's Fredreka Shouten and Paul Overberg reported on the paper's comprehensive analysis of lobbying reports that found 2,759 payments, totaling $35.8 million, were made in 2008. They quote Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, "It's another example of the many pockets of a politician's coat." The spending amounts to an "end-run" around campaign-finance laws "that are designed to limit the appearance of undue influence." National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" interviewed Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs’s director, about U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley's (Iowa) use of Twitter to criticize President Obama's call for action on health care. Grassley’s message: "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND." Clay said, "He may not be the most prolific writer in 140 characters or less, but there's something really authentic about it."

NPR Interview

Federal News Radio interviewed Daniel Schuman about how the U.S. Supreme Court's nine-year old Web site is hard to navigate, difficult to use and in need of a significant upgrade. Daniel had blogged about the SCOTUS site last week. You can listen to the interview here.

Federal News Radio interview

Journalists used Center for Responsive Politics data to show how two important congressional battles are shaping up. With the debate over health reform intensifing, The New York Times’ Robert Pear looked at the political spending of doctors. Since the 2000 election cycle, their political action committee has contributed $9.8 million to congressional candidates with Republicans got more than Democrats in the four election cycles before 2008, when 56 percent went to Democrats. Congress is also considering legislation that would mandate the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate and approve the use of tobacco. Halimah Abdullah with McClatchy Newspapers reports that CRP data shows that among the 17 senators who voted against tasking the FDA with the tobacco regulatory role are top recipients of campaign contributions from the industry.

The Washington Post’s Paul Kane and Carol D. Leonnig researched the House lawmakers’ annual financial disclosure reports released Wednesday. They found lawmakers had significant investments in the financial institutions that took billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts at the end of last year, raising conflict-of-interest questions. They quote Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, as being critical of congressional lawmakers investing directly in companies they oversee. "You wonder if they're voting on things because it's good for the country or because it would increase their personal wealth," Melanie said.

Bara Viada at National Journal's "Under the Influence" blog reported on and links to Party Time's post about how the National Republican Campaign Committee inadvertently included a fundraising event for a Democratic lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Gary Peters (Mich.), on a list of fundraising events the party committee sent out earlier this week. Roll Call's (subscription required) Emily Heil and Elizabeth Brotherton, writing at their "Heard on the Hill" column, also report on Party Time's catch, as did Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

ProPublica’s Christina Jewett reported on the Project for Government Oversight’s call on the FDA’s inspector general to investigate the agency in light of its failure to stop contaminated syringes from reaching the market. An earlier report said the FDA’s inaction allowed 74,000 contaminated syringes to be shipped. “Authorities connected four deaths and 162 illnesses to the syringes,” Jewett wrote.

At his Joho the Blog, David Weinberger, live blogged a talk Clay participated in yesterday at the New Media Academic Summit held by public relations firm Edelman at Georgetown University. When asked how government and others can be encouraged to produce data in open formats Clay responded, "I’m more focused on just getting the data out. I don’t care about the format. We should tell them just to do it in plain text, if that’ll get it out faster. Once the government starts pumping it out we can have the debate about which standards."

InformationWeek’s Thomas Claburn reports on a court case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over the issue of whether e-mail messages deserve the same privacy protection as telephone calls. He notes that Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Ohio, and the Center for Democracy and Technology filed an amicus brief in the case, Warshak v. USA, in support of added privacy protections.

T. J. Kelleher, writing at science magazine Seed’s "Week in Review" editorial, looked at Data.gov, the federal government’s site that promises to provide free access to data generated across all of its agencies. Kelleher asked, “Where’s the sunshine?” Kelleher mentions Sunlight Labs' Apps for America 2 contest, which is encouraging developers to build tools that will enable the common citizen to engage with the information Data.gov will be making available.

Federal Computer Week’s Ben Bain reported on Miriam Nisbet’s appointment to be the first director of a new office at the National Archives and Records Administration that will provide policy guidance to agencies for the handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and mediate disagreements about agency decisions not to grant requests. Some have referred to the new position as an “ombudsman” for FOIA, a development that open government advocates have welcomed wholeheartedly. Bain quotes Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org’s director, as saying Nisbet has a deep knowledge of the issues and has strong ties to the open-government community. Patrice worked directly with Nisbet for four years at the American Library Association, Bain reports.

Tim Catts at AOL’s Daily Finance site reported that the ten banks cleared by the feds to buy back $68 billion in preferred stock investments they sold under the Treasury Department's rescue program aren't quite in the clear yet. They still have to settle on a price to repurchase hundreds of millions of warrants held by the government. Catts suggests his readers turn to SubsidyScope for a quick rundown of what goes into valuing a warrant.

In case you didn't see it, Jake Brewer, Sunlight’s engagement director, briefly profiles RaceTracker on The Huffington Post, the "non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project that lists every candidate running in every U.S. Senate, House and governor's race" that soft launched yesterday.