Sunlight Foundation

Financial Holdings of Spouses

The Center for Responsive Politics has a nice post that digs deeply into that treasure trove known as the Personal Financial Disclosure forms of members of Congress.

Forty-six husbands and wives of Congress members reported owning stock in 2006 in companies that have a vested interest in their spouses' committees, worth a total of $27.3 million to $46.7 million, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The list includes spouses who own stock in Lockheed Martin while the lawmaker sits on the House Armed Services Committee; or are invested in food giant SYSCO while the lawmaker is a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry Committee; or own shares of Exxon Mobil while married to a member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee...

In 2006, the most recent year for which CRP has been able to analyze personal financial disclosure data, the spouses of Democratic lawmakers had more invested in companies related to their committees (worth at least $23.2 million) than the lawmakers themselves did (worth at least $5.5 million). The spouses of Republican lawmakers, by contrast, had less money invested in companies related to these committees (worth at least $4.1 million) than the lawmakers themselves (worth at least $39 million).

Overall, 304 congressional husbands and wives whose finances were reported on their spouses' forms were worth between $698.8 million and $1.3 billion from their stocks, corporate bonds and other investments in 2006. (Assets and liabilities are disclosed in ranges on these forms, making it impossible to calculate net worth precisely.) The most popular spousal assets overall included General Electric, drugmaker Pfizer and Bank of America.

In at least 61 cases, the husbands and wives of Congress had investment portfolios worth significantly more than the lawmaker's. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, for example, reported assets worth no more than $15,000, while her husband, Paul, an investor, had between $16.2 million and $57.8 million in assets. Spouses also bring with them their mortgages, school loans and other liabilities, however. For Paul Pelosi, this could mean up to $10.3 million in debt, more than any other lawmaker's spouse.

Really interesting stuff.

Corker's Aide Proves our Point about Financial Disclosures

Herman Wang reports in the Chattanooga Times Free Press that Todd Womack, an aide to Sen. Bob Corker, disputes the numbers we reported from Corker's personal financial disclosure form in our recently released project, Fortune 535. Womack argues that Sunlight didn't include in Corker's net worth the millions he made from selling properties, which he reported as transactions. Our question back is why doesn't that money turn up in Corker's assets? According to the Senate Ethics Manual, members are supposed to report as assets "Any property held by the filer, his/her spouse, and/or dependent children for investment or the production of income (e.g. real estate, stocks, bonds, accounts, and business income)." Unless Corker never deposited the check, the money from the sale of his buildings should show up as an asset (or assets) somewhere on his form.

Womack said that the Sunlight Foundation made a "strange assertion" about Corker's net worth, but all we did was add up what he reported and filed with the Senate Ethics Committee. The only strange assertion is the form that Corker filed. As we noted when we released Fortune 535, "Take what follows with a boulder-sized grain of salt: It's all based on information from the seriously flawed disclosure system used by members of Congress." Maybe someone should add a surgeon general-like warning label on congressional financial disclosure forms: "Warning: Relying on disclosures from members of Congress may impair your accuracy."

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