A few weeks ago NPR's Planet Money team contacted us with a pretty simple inquiry: What happens at congressional fundraisers? But as their most recent podcast shows, getting to know what goes on at these events is not that simple.

Sunlight Editorial Director Bill Allison joined Planet Money reporter Alex Blumberg checking out a few fundraisers happening on a busy night in Washington, DC. Party Time indicated there were at least 20 events scheduled but gaining access was more challenging than a night club's velvet rope.

Why the secrecy and closed doors? Listen to the podcast to learn more.

And check out Party Time to know when and where Congress and the presidential candidates are fundraising. Say for instance tomorrow's Jay Z - Kanye West concert or a weekend retreat with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Have any invites to share? Send us an anonymous tip.

Do you remember the AT&T/T-Mobile merger that dominated the news earlier this fall? It caused quite the stir in Washington, with numerous outlets reporting on AT&T's massive lobbying efforts to push through the merger. Bloomberg was one such news outlet, reporting a story of expensive steaks and 'lobbyist's libations' in early September. The story focused on the numerous swanky fundraisers AT&T was hosting as well as their generous campaign donations to key lawmakers.

This was undoubtedly a great investigative piece and involved a good deal of skilled journalism. Using this article as a guide, however, it's possible to see how any of us - or you - could do a similar investigation.

Fundraisers

The article begins describing the lavish fundraisers AT&T had been hosting for lawmakers, citing Sunlight's Party Time data.

• "AT&T hosted at least nine fundraising receptions and dinners since the deal was announced on March 20."
• One of which was held at Charlie Palmer Steak, where "AT&T and one of its outside firms, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, shared hosting duties for a June 14 fundraising dinner for Representative Henry Waxman, of California."
• Another was held at BLT Steak. The article says it "was the scene of a June 21 fundraising dinner hosted by AT&T for Representative Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican who sits on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee."

Sunlight's Party Time data is free and available for anyone to use. We manually collect fundraiser and event invitations and put them online. They are searchable by a variety of of criteria including committee, leadership PAC, beneficiary, host, and venue.

For example, a PartyFinder search for "AT&T" as a "Host" returns a list of all the fundraisers hosted by AT&T's Federal PAC. The most recent one was September 20th. A PartyFinder search for "Charlie Palmer Steak" as "Venue Name" returns a list of all the fundraisers held at the restaurant mentioned in the article. It's a popular locale - already three fundraisers are scheduled to be held there next month.

Campaign Donations

The article makes a number of points that suggest AT&T exerted its political influence through campaign donations. The article notes the following, frequently citing data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics:

• "AT&T's political action committee gave $805,500 to federal candidates."
• The company's PAC "was the most generous corporate PAC this year."
• "House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Representative Fred Upton... each received $5,000 from AT&T’s PAC."
• During the past year AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi donated "$1,500 to Boehner, $2,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and $1,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee."
• Since 2009, AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson has donated "$2,000 to Boehner, $6,000 to the Republican senatorial committee and $4,000 to the Republican congressional committee."
• "AT&T’s contributions this year have split 64 percent to Republicans and 36 percent to Democrats, compared with... 55 percent Republican and 45 percent Democratic in the previous election cycle."
• "AT&T’s PAC has given Waxman $4,000 so far this year, and Akin Gump’s PAC gave him $1,200."
• "Roskam received $3,500 from AT&T’s PAC."
  

Lobbying Efforts

The article notes that AT&T "boosted lobbying spending by 30 percent to $11.7 million in the first six months of 2011 compared with a year earlier" and that the company "supplemented its own in-house lobbyists with 18 outside firms pushing for the merger." The article specifically notes:

• "The firm of former U.S. senators John Breaux [ ... ] and Trent Lott [ ... ] received $240,000."
• "A company headed by former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts [ ... ] got $100,000."
• "Former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin’s firm was paid $50,000"
• "Wiley Rein LLP, a law firm [ ... ] co-founded by former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Richard Wiley, received $160,000."
• "Clyburn Consulting LLC, where the principal [ ... ] a cousin to Representative James Clyburn [ ... ] received $60,000"
• "Akin Gump received $240,000 this year to lobby on behalf of the merger and other issues."

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Sunlight Foundation. It is exciting to reflect on how far we've come, the great people who helped us along the way and where we plan to go. With your help, we've grown from a small organization with big ideas to a connected community whose call for greater government openness and transparency is heard throughout the country.

We began with the nonpartisan goal of using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new technology to open government information. When we started, this modern interpretation of transparency was almost a completely foreign idea in Washington - a place where corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff dominated the headlines and sifting through reams of paper in order to get at the truth of what was going on was the status quo. While ordinary citizens were embracing new media tools and websites that gave them a readily available stream of information at their fingertips, government showed little interest in keeping up with the times.

Right out of the gate, we took on these age-old issues with a fresh arsenal of online tools and empowered citizens to engage in new forms of direct oversight. We believed then, as we still do, that none of us are as smart as all of us and that we have a stronger democracy when open information gives people the ammunition they need so they can speak truth to power. Sunlight developed all kinds of new tools and websites to achieve these goals and get the public involved in the political process.

We encouraged lawmakers to post their schedules online and launched the Open House Project to engage policy experts, citizens and lawmakers in a conversation on all the ways the House of Representatives could update how it shares information with the public. We initiated and funded dozens of projects to create online databases of government information. Everything from earmarks to congressional fundraiser invitations to foreign lobbying disclosures to House expenditures. We created mobile applications to put Congress into the hands of the people and fostered a community of thousands of 'civic hackers' to build better tools. We updated legislative rules and collaboratively wrote new policy to open government to the Internet age. We've trained thousands of journalists and citizens in using data and in using the web to watchdog Washington. We modeled government websites to show what is possible and followed the money, lobbying and the influence industry with ongoing reporting projects.

Through it all we are most inspired and proud of the people who take action and participate in the process to improve our democracy. Thank you to the countless people and organizations who have worked with us, used our tools, dug deep into our websites through our first five years. The Sunlight Foundation will continue to work with you explore how to enhance our democracy and citizen engagement with our public officials using online tools. Sure, there's a lot more to be done. As a wise person once said, if this was easy, it would have been done already. And we promise you - the best is yet to come!

Please continue to support our work to keep the light shining on government.

This is a cross-post with Political Party Time

There are some pre-State of the Union fundraisers happening on the Hill tonight.

The docket of events could start with a stiff drink alongside Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc. He will be attending “Martinis and Mayhem” at 5 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Club, his office confirmed. The shindig attempts to raise up to $1,000 per supporter for his campaign, according to the invitation.

At 6:30 p.m., two of Rep. Joe Barton’s, R-Texas, former top aides-turned influential lobbyists will be hosting a $1,500-per-PAC dinner at the townhouse of lobbyist Rick Murphy. One former aide, Bud Albright, was the staff director of the Energy and Commerce Committee while Barton was the chair. He recently became the man responsible for implementing CenterPoint Energy’s legislative agenda. The other lobbyist is Jeff MacKinnon, Barton’s former legislative director who has many telecom and energy clients.

Also hosting is health care lobbyist Jeff Kimbell, a former member of President George W. Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services transition team advisory committee.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, a freshman and former outsider candidate who won the 2010 election with Tea Party support, will be eating dinner at a Trattoria Alberto fundraiser on the Hill at 6 p.m. The ask is $500 for individual donations and $1,000 for PAC donations.

Meanwhile, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., who is giving the Republican response to Obama’s speech, was supposed to hold a leadership PAC fundraiser tonight in D.C. but it’s been postponed for a date to be determined, according to his fundraising consultant. The event had been scheduled before he was tapped for the speech, the consultant said.

Sunlight hasn’t been around nearly as long as that song -- it was first recorded in 1961 and we opened our doors in May of 2006 -- but for us 2009 was a very good year. We have you, an amazing staff and boards, and our generous investors to thank for that. Hardly a day went by when a new idea wasn’t hatched, tested or dumped, when a blog item wasn’t posted, when an idea for how to visualize data wasn’t tossed around. The best ideas survived and thrived in the creative, collaborative (and yes, sometimes chaotic) culture Sunlight has nurtured for the past 3 and a half years. We are excited about how far we have come and that we are poised for even bigger strides in the next decade.

A few highlights from this year from my point of view.

OpenCongress.org -- our joint project with the Participatory Politics Foundation --launched its most comprehensive site redesign mid-year, improving usability of its tools and clarity of data presentation. In addition, it integrated new useful sources of data and feature sets to make it even easier for individuals and organizations to track and share the best info about their interests  and, as result of the redesign and new features, and hot issues like health care and financial industry reform, OpenCongress has experienced its most-ever sustained traffic levels this year. In fact, in August 2009, shortly after the launch of the redesign, it appeared that OpenCongress became the most-visited government engagement Web site in the U.S., and perhaps in the world. And wait til next year -- if you think OpenCongress is a useful site, imagine the same kind of web-based resources rolled out for your state in 2010 based on state legislative data.

Apps for America Contests. Sunlight held two very successful contests this year resulting in the creation of 100 new apps based on government data. (Yes, this data can actually be made interesting and useful for ordinary mortals.) These contests were hugely important to the development of a strong and engaged Sunlight Labs community and for demonstrating an interest in government data. The community exploded reaching over 1,200 participants. Check out some of the wonderful apps if you haven’t seen them already.

The Great American Hackathon was held on December 12-13 just before Sunlight took off for its well-deserved winter break. The Hackathon -- run by our Labs team -- was a decentralized event held at over 20 venues across the country and its purpose was simple -- to get developers to meet each other and to work on new open source open government projects.

Transparency Corps. We launched Transparency Corps this year -- Sunlight’s answer to the question we often are asked: ‘How can I help?’ We ran several campaigns on that platform and expect it to become even more active in ‘10. We parsed the Kentucky State Legislature manually, worked with Open New York, collected the number of votes each member of Congress received and ran two earmark-related campaigns. All in all, it resulted in a contribution of 662 volunteer hours for the Sunlight Foundation and 228 hours for partners, and the completion of 8,312 individual tasks. Wow!

Mobile Apps. In the last half of 2009 we developed apps for the iPhone and the Android. The Android app, ‘Congress’, has received over 2,000 downloads which is significant for the Android marketplace. The iPhone app, ‘Real Time Congress’ just received approval and we plan to formally launch it the first week of January, 2010 We also built an overlay of Recovery.gov data on the LayAR augmented reality mobile app. This move into the use of augmented reality to show the usefulness of online disclosure of government information has sparked the interest of many. Fairly obviously, expect lots more along these lines in the next year.

Congrelate. Sunlight Labs built Congrelate as a way for people to view, sort, filter and share data about members of Congress and their districts. The Labs compiled data from Congress, the Census, OpenSecrets.org, GovTrack and other sources to let users manipulate the data and see how they relate. Congrelate allows users to select what data they would like to see, add it to a ‘sheet’ then filter and sort through it easily. Congrelate will get renewed attention in 2010 with new data sets added and an improved UI.

Transparency Camps. Sunlight hosted two unconferences this year -- one here in DC and one at Google HQ in Mountain View. Through events like this, and our Transparency Breakfasts and Transparency Happy Hours, Sunlight is helping to build new relationships that will hope will create and galvanize a transparency community. We hope you’ll join in these events as we plan more for the coming year. House (and Senate) Expenditures Online. As a direct result of Sunlight’s suggestions, on November 30, the House published their expenditures reports online for the first time. Sunlight had long advocated for such a move, and devoted a section of our Transparency in Government Act (drafted in 2008) to the issue.  (Senate reports will be forthcoming in 2010.) Sunlight quickly crafted an online database of the newly released information, since the House reports were released in a PDF document  (boo…..) rather than a searchable database. (File this one under the category of ‘If Congress won’t do 21st century style transparency we’ll show them how to do it.’)

Read the Bill. Technology makes it possible for anyone to review legislation before it’s considered and tell their representative what they think of it. In 2009 Sunlight began calling for posting all legislation online for 72 hours before its considered by either the House or the Senate. Now thanks to our efforts to heighten public awareness around this, Congress can no longer talk about a piece of major legislation without a reporter asking, ‘will the final version of the bill be online for 72 hours?’ Sunlight has helped to change the conversation and the way the public is thinking about transparency even when transparency laws or regulations have yet to pass. We’ll keep pushing this forward in ’10 to make sure that every bill is available on line before it’s considered by Congress.

Redesigning Government series. In 2009, Sunlight launched an ongoing ‘redesigning’ government series -- making mock-up redesigns of GSA, FEC, EPA, FCC and Supreme Court sites, and others. This work resulted in many conversations with each of the agencies about their Web sites and how the agencies could improve the ways they make data available to the public. We even crowd-sourced testimony we presented to the Federal Election Commission with details for their consideration. We think that was first!

Real Time Investigations had an incredibly successful year, using Sunlight and grantee-sponsored tools to push the envelope of transparency, and using shoe leather reporting to find out what the data can tell us about who owes what to whom, how and on what government spends its money. Hundreds of investigative posts were made to the site. Sunlight’s Reporting Group wrote 11 major stories using data from the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker alone. This team was also responsible for training more than 1,250 journalists and bloggers in 2009 an activity that will pay off handsomely as more data comes on line. Next year expect to find many  of these training resources online.

Party Time. Sunlight’s Party Time site now contains more than 6,700 fund-raising invitations and it has become a valuable resource for journalists, bloggers and advocacy groups. In particular, we saw an increase in outside groups using the data to do their own complex analysis. Everyone can follow the money after it’s raised, but only Sunlight gives you an introduction into real time political fund-raising.

The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker was launched this year, a joint project with ProPublica. The site digitized, for the first time, information from disclosures filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA, which requires lobbyists for foreign governments to reveal a wealth of information about their lobbying activities, including the dates and subjects of their contacts with members of Congress, their staffers and executive branch officials. The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker makes more than 13,000 records searchable by lobbyist, client, person contacted and issue raised. The site has been searched 163,104 times by media organizations, citizens and even congressional staff. We will continue this project into 2010 with ProPublica.

There was a lot more. Sunlight worked closely with the Administration to help move them in the right direction on the Open Government Directive and their lobby reform initiatives. We are happy to see our fingerprints in many aspects of what was announced by the White House in late December. So too, Sunlight worked with many players on the Hill to convince them to begin to open up Congressional information. We've begun to explore how transparency is practiced -- or not -- at the state level too. At the end of the year we were hard at work on several major legislative initiatives to be introduced in January of 2010 that would  dramatically improve Congressional transparency.

None of the above speaks to the thousands of blog posts written at Sunlight, Sunlight Labs, Open Congress, Real Time Investigations, or on the Party Time websites, nor the stunning visualizations that accompanied and highlighted many of those posts (think  ‘a picture is worth a 1,000 words'), nor the hours of conversations with elected officials, their staff and administration officials, as we all come to grips with how technology can change how we get access to information and what the public can do with it. Our work on SubsidyScope, the Pew Charitable Trust project for which we are building a database of government subsidies, garnered tremendous kudos for its design and ease of use as the first sectors were released. There are a number of soon to be released projects on which we spent hundreds of hours of development time this year  – new tools that will make it easier for journalists, bloggers and citizens to make use of data in easily understandable ways.

2010 will be an incredible year for us.  Lots of plans are underway. Some I’ve mentioned above, and Clay Johnson, Labs director detailed a number of them including figuring out how to handle the glut of data that government will make available under its Open Government Directive and how to enhance it with state and local government data too; mashing important ‘influence’ and ‘spending’ data sets together so it will be available with a single search; widgets to make following your lawmaker’s campaign contributions and earmarks (and other activities) very easy; launching a new major new campaign to drive public demand for more -- more transparency, more data, and a more open government. And always on our list is making all this information more easily available for reporters, bloggers and online citizens like you. We’d love to have your ideas of what you’d find useful. Please leave them in the comment section below.

For all your support and help -- and for the hard work of our grantees -- we are most grateful. We welcome all your contributions -- monetary and participatory. And we hope you will help us keep transparency priceless.

As the summer of the Democrats' discontent winds to a close, the head count for health care reform in the Senate begins in earnest. One of the key Democratic senators on the fence is Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 2010 election. Lincoln jumped into the news today with a quote to a reporter stating her opposition to a public option plan in a health care reform bill. "I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can't afford that," Lincoln said. The senior Arkansas senator is also the 2nd highest recipient of campaign contributions from the health industry among senators this year.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lincoln has received $325,350 in contributions from the health industry, as of June 30. The large amount in contributions underlies a constantly shifting position by the senator on health care reform.

One of Lincoln's biggest contributors this cycle is the insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield. The company's political action committee and employees have combined to give the senator $29,500 this year alone. Blue Cross Blue Shield and their parent company Wellpoint are vocal opponents of the inclusion of a public option plan in any health care reform bill. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the dominant insurer in Arkansas holding a 75 percent market share.

Blue Cross Blue Shield does not need to only rely on campaign contributions to reach Sen. Lincoln, as they retain Lincoln's former top health care policy adviser as a lobbyist. Elizabeth Barnett worked for Lincoln from 2000 to 2007 before leaving to become the top Democratic lobbyist for Blue Cross Blue Shield. Earlier this year, Barnett left Blue Cross to work for Avenue Solutions, where she retains Blue Cross Blue Shield as a client. Avenue Solutions' profile of Barnett notes that she "had primary responsibility for representing [Blue Cross Blue Shield] and its 39 member plans before the Senate Finance Committee, Senate Democratic Leadership, and other key Senate committees and offices." Barnett also represents other health industry organizations including UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Bravo Health, Healthcare Leadership Council, Medco and the National Health Policy Group.

Barnett is not the only former Lincoln staffer working as a lobbyist for the health industry. Lincoln's former chief of staff Kelly Bingel is a lobbyist specializing in health care at Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc, the lobbying firm of Sen. Max Baucus' former chief of staff David Castagnetti. Bingel represents a who's who of the health care industry including America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Pharmaceutical Researchers & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). AHIP and PhRMA have been largely supportive of health care reform this year. PhRMA, in particular, has supported the current legislation with positive advertising after receiving concessions from the White House and the Senate Finance Committee. Bingel also represents the Business Roundtable, a group that has voiced opposition to health care reform.

Throughout this year, Lincoln has benefited from countless fundraisers thrown by lobbyists. The Party Time database lists one fundraiser thrown by health care lobbyists for Lincoln. On July 24, Ernst & Young feted Lincoln with a fundraiser hosted by health care lobbyists Nick Giordano (formerly of Sen. Baucus' staff), Dick Meltzer (since moved on to Speaker Pelosi's staff), LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, Holly Bode, Francis Grab, Dave Koshgarian and Jeff Petrich. Contributions from this fundraiser will not be publicly available until the third quarter finance reports are filed.

update: post edited.

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

CQ Politics' Richard Rubin reports how House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.), already beset by a series of ethics investigations, recently disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets. Rubin notes that earlier this year, Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, found similar problems with Rangel’s previous disclosure reports. According to Bill’s analysis, Rangel failed to report purchases, sales or his ownership of assets at least 28 times since 1978 on his personal financial disclosure forms. Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appeared and disappeared with no disclosure of when they were acquired, how long they were held or when they were sold, as House rules require. “I understand being sloppy, missing an asset once or twice,” Bill said. “But what this shows is he doesn’t take financial disclosure seriously. How else can you year after year have these inaccuracies? It doesn’t look like there is a lot of care put it into compared to other members. It makes people suspicious when all of a sudden you double your wealth. Without knowing how a member accumulated that wealth, people are going to ask questions.” The New York Times' David Kocieniewski reported on Rangel's discrepancies and quotes Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying the New York lawmaker’s haphazard approach to his finances had undermined his credibility in Congress. “Sloppy bookkeeping is not a valid excuse for a sophisticated member of Congress who is chairman of the committee that handles complex financial issues like the tax code,” she said. Glenn Reynolds, at his popular "Instapundit" blog, has followed the various Rangel stories and picks up on Bill's Real Time Investigations post responding to the CQ Politics report.

Halimah Abdullah, with McClatchy Newspapers, reported on a study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity that found more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received so far this year came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries. The report cites Center for Responsive Politics data to show how, on average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more. Abdullah used Party Time data to show how coalition members are raising campaign cash at fundraisers.  McClatchy papers across the country ran the story.

Wired's "Epicenter" blog highlighted the Apps for America 2 contest finalists. Government Computer News quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs' director, discussing the finalists.

Russia Today reported on ProPublica's and Sunlight's Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which allows anyone to search the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to quickly learn what governments are lobbying our government and about what. "It's amazing how much lobbyist really do have an impact on public policy," Bill Allison is quoted as saying. "You can follow lobbying campaigns online and see policies changing." The whole interview can be listened to here. The blog of the Legal Times also highlighted the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which they write "creates ways to search those records by legislator contacted, country, lobbying firm, client and issue. Previously, the filings were only available online via a Department of Justice Web site as non-searchable .pdf files."

MAPLight.org launched Money Near Votes, "a new government transparency tool making it easy to track special-interest contributions to legislators given within a month, a week, or a day of when a vote occurred." This new tool promises a new level of transparency by honing in on the role special interests play in shaping public policy. "Never before have these 'well-timed' campaign donations been highlighted in such an exhaustive, easy-to-locate format," MAPLight asserts.

A Bloomberg attempt to pry open the Federal Reserve moved forwards this week as Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in favor of the FOIA request for certain documents related to the Fed's emergency lending. The Project On Open Government (POGO) lays out the story behind the case and explains that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will have to answer questions about the Fed's transparency when he faces the Senate for his renomination hearing.

While President Obama and Defense Secretary Bob Gates have laid out a moderately ambitious plan for defense acquisition reform, Mother Jones finds that lobbyist-turned-Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn is standing in the way of further changes.

Public Citizen used Sunlight's Party Time data to show that no one is throwing for fundraisers than the banks bailed out by the federal government. The influence lives on.

In a mind-boggling ruling, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will allow Rep. Pete Visclosky, under investigation for potential earmarking abuses in PMA Group scandal, to use campaign funds to pay the legal fees of his staff -- including former staff. This means that Rep. Visclosky can pay the legal fees of PMA lobbyist Rich Kaelin because he is a former Visclosky staffer. As Zach Roth writes at TPM Muckraker, this also means that Rep. John Murtha could potentially pay for the legal fees of Paul Magliocchetti, the founder of the PMA Group, as Magliocchetti is a former Murtha staffer. Now you know where your campaign contributions are going.

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

Jonathan D. Salant and Lizzie O’Leary with Bloomberg.com have an article showing how there are six lobbyists attempting to influence the health care reform debate for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate. That figure is three times the number of lobbyists registered to lobby on defense. They used data from the Center for Responsive Politics to illustrate how every one of the 10 biggest lobbying firms by revenue is attempting to influence the debate on behalf of some interest or another, spending $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009 alone. They quote Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, “Whenever you have a big piece of legislation like this, it’s like ringing the dinner bell for K Street.” Multiple other outlets picked up the article and Bill's quote, including Kate Barrett at ABC News. And David Schechter, CNN's senior national editor, wrote a column about the lobbying feeding frenzy surrounding the health care reform debate. He lists Sunlight and OpenSecrets.org as good sources for information on the "lobbying largesse."

In light of the increasingly heated debate over how to reform health care policy, Lisa Stone at BlogHer wrote about the new partnership between BlogHer and OpenCongress, the joint project between the Participatory Politics Foundation and Sunlight, to provide a forum to move the discourse in a more civil and positive direction. They have asked Nancy Watzman, Sunlight's director of the Party Time project, to share her investigations on their site multiple times a week. Be sure to check their coverage out, which starts today.

Writing at Forbes, Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, wrote about what he calls the promise of innovation provided by Government 2.0. And he asked, "How does government itself become an open platform that allows people inside and outside government to innovate?" O'Reilly points to the Apps for America contests as an example of the "virtuous circle of citizen innovation" using the information made available through the White House's Data.gov. PC World published a piece by Grant Gross with IDB News Service on how the contest is asking developer to use the raw data released on Data.gov and elsewhere to demonstrate the power of data-publishing and number-crunching services. Gross discussed with Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs' director, about how the Labs works to assist traditional and citizen journalists with investigative reporting. "As the Obama administration begins to release more data, there aren't enough fingers on keyboards here in Sunlight Labs to handle all this," Clay said. "Has the Obama administration succeeded in making more government data available? You're talking to the guy with the most unquenchable thirst for that, who will never say that they're successful."

The Boston Globe's "Political Notebook" column makes note of two of Sunlight's closest friends, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Center for Responsive Politics, teaming up to create a database showing campaign cash to congressional lawmakers and the earmarks that they requested. Taxpayers is providing the data showing more than 20,000 earmarks totaling more than $35 billion. And CRP has detailed $227 million in campaign donations and lobbying expenses. The article quotes Ryan Alexander, Taxpayer's president, “Earmarks and campaign contributions are part and parcel of the pay-to-play system that permeates Washington...Companies making thousands of dollars in campaign contributions get millions of earmarked taxpayer dollars from lawmakers." The database can be searched here.

Speaking of earmarks, Greenwire's Anne C. Mulkern wrote about how lawmakers, while crafting legislation meant to finance the Department of Energy, inserted $75.2 million in earmarks for research at schools and universities in their home states and districts. Mulkern quotes Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, questioning the use of earmarks to fund research. "The gold standard in academic research is peer-reviewed analysis," Ellis said. "Picking the winners and losers based on geography and not who has conducted the best research is a recipe for wasting precious taxpayer dollars."  The New York Times republished Mulkern's article.

FederalNewsRadio's Max Cacas reported on the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) new guide, "The Art of Congressional Oversight: A Users Guide to Doing it Right." The 83-page volume contains insights into how to be a successful congressional committee investigator, Cacas writes. POGO put on paper what they've been teaching over the past three years via monthly training sessions, free lunchtime skill-building seminars designed to educate Hill staffers about their rights, responsibilities and powers working in the realm of congressional oversight. The trainings and book are part of POGO's effort to teach congressional staffers about the constitutionally-mandated jobs of Congress -- providing oversight over the cabinet-level agencies and other organizations within the executive branch.

Special note: As National Journal's "Hotline On Call" pointed out on their list of upcoming weekend public policy programming, Ellen Miller, Sunlight's executive director, will be appearing on C-SPAN's "Communicators" program Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m. (EST).

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

Alan Fram with the Associated Press wrote about how the health insurance industry is fighting to prevent the Congress from passing a health care overhaul that includes a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. Fram cites data from the Center for Responsive Politics to show how health insurers have made $41 million in campaign contributions to current congressional lawmakers since 1989, “with more than half going to lawmakers on the five House and Senate panels writing this year’s health bills.” Since the beginning of 2008, insurers have spent $145 million on lobbying.

The New York Times' Jack Rosenthal, in writing the paper’s “On Language” column, mentioned how Andrew Raseij, Sunlight’s senior technology advisor and co-director of Personal Democracy Forum, is pushing for a federal law that redefines “public” to mean searchable and readable online. U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.) is drafting just such legislation. Rosenthal also noted how the Senate does not disclose campaign-contribution information to the Federal Election Commission in an electronic form. “That means it must be digitized by the commission, by which time the next election may well have come and gone. Transparent? Yes, but also emasculated,” Rosenthal wrote.

Federal Computer Week’s Ben Bain wrote about how the Obama administration is asking federal agencies to gear their spending plans for science and technology in fiscal 2011 toward projects designed to drive economic growth, create energy independence, improve health, and bolster security, according to recently issued general guidance. Peter Orszag, Obama’s OMB director, outlined the new emphasis in an August 4th memo (PDF). Craig Jennings, a senior federal fiscal policy analyst with OMB Watch, said the memo is an indication that science and technology will be high priorities for the administration.

Colin Barr at Fortune magazine wrote about how skeptics are questioning a claim made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Geithner said taxpayers have made a small profit, $6 billion, on their investments in banks via the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Barr quotes Marcus Peacock, Pew’s project director of Subsidyscope saying the government isn’t doing enough to document what’s happening with the money. Peacock said government data collection projects are often “pockmarked” with omissions and outright errors, a pattern that hasn’t been broken with the financial bailouts. Despite the administration’s public embrace of transparency, it has failed to provide full and understandable disclosure of its actions in TARP, Peacock said.

The Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer editorialized about the Blue Dog Coalition’s effect on the health care debate in Congress, using Dan Eggen’s article in last Friday’s edition of The Washington Post. The editorial notes Eggen citing Party Time’s compilation of records of political fundraisers since 2008. “America has been waiting for more than 60 years for universal health care. (The) Blue Dogs wouldn’t mind if it took another 60 years to give Americans what every other advanced nation in the world now has,” the editorial says. “This is yet another example of how our current system of legalized bribery, otherwise known as campaign contributions, distorts the democratic process.”

Beth Sussman, writing at the National Journal’s “Under the Influence” blog, OpenCongress' redesign. She quotes OpenCongress’ David Moore, “You never hear somebody at a bar talking about clause 56 in H.R. 3200.” So OpenCongress “enables peer-to-peer communication about the best information on bills in Congress.” Sussman reports how the site now has an email form, so you can send an email to contact lawmakers about legislation, a tracking tool so you can compare how you would vote on a piece of legislation with how your representative has voted and a personalized list of legislation you may support or oppose. “There was a real opportunity to bring together this confusing government data with helpful data and what people were saying about it,” David said. The site aims to “make all the information about Congress more accessible to people who aren’t necessarily Congress-buffs.”

USA Today wrote about documents made public by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) that showed how Amtrak wanted to fire its independent Inspector General, who was effectively forced to resign several weeks ago. The IG and the rail carrier had feuded since it was revealed in 2006 that Amtrak had spent more than $100 million in mismanaged fees to private lawyers over a five year period, allegedly violating Amtrak billing rules.

The Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star editorialized about the need for congressional lawmakers to read legislation they are voting on. They mentioned how Sunlight is one of a number of organizations advocating that Congress put all legislation online 72 hours before they conduct a vote. The editorial called on Nebraska’s congressional delegation to support such a proposal.