We are another step closer to the end of secret holds in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has placed the Secret Holds Elimination Act on the Senate calendar making it easy for Reid to call the bill up for a vote. The Secret Holds Elimination Act would require senators to publicly disclose all holds placed on nominations and legislation. Here's the press release from Sen. Claire McCaskill's office:

Legislation authored by U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa) and Claire McCaskill (D- Mo.) to eliminate a senator's ability to obstruct legislation in secret was placed on the Senate calendar today, opening the door for a definitive up or down vote on the legislation. The modified version of the "Secret Holds Elimination Act"- previously introduced by Wyden and Grassley - will require that all holds be submitted in writing and disclosed after one legislative day.

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The three have now joined forces to introduce a new version of the Secret Holds Elimination Act. The legislation will require that all holds on legislation and nominees be submitted in writing and automatically printed in the Congressional Record after one legislative day, whether the bill or nomination has been brought up for floor consideration or not. The latter provision will eliminate the all-too-common practice of secret holds being used to indefinitely prevent bills from reaching the Senate floor.

This is a nice piece of legislation from Sens. Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley:

The Secret Holds Elimination Act would eliminate a Senator’s ability to indefinitely hold legislation in secret by requiring Senators to submit their holds to leadership in writing and to publically disclose all holds within two days whether or not the bill or nomination has been brought to the floor for consideration.  Leadership will only honor holds that they have in writing and that comply with the two day rule.

Six senators called for a seventy day hold on voting on health care reform legislation today, according to the Huffington Post. The senators involved include three Democrats, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Ron Wyden, two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and one Independent, Joe Lieberman. Each these senators has raised at least $1 million from the health and insurance sectors combined over the course of their respective careers. What could seventy days do for their campaign coffers?

(Some of these senators are not in cycle right now and are not raising much money right now, but, hypothetically, this is the money they could be raising considering the amounts they have raised over the course of their career.)

Sen. Susan Collins raised $1,559,446 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of her career. Her first day in office was January 7, 1997. In total, she has served 4,574 days as a United States Senator. This calculates out to her raising $341 every day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $23,870.

Sen. Mary Landrieu raised $1,676,353 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of her career. Her first day in office was January 7, 1997. In total, she has served 4,574 days as a United States Senator. This calculates out to her raising $366.50 every day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $25,655.

Sen. Joe Lieberman raised $3,593,771 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of his career. His first day in office, as a senator, was January 3, 1989. In total, he has served 7,136 days as a United States Senator. This works out to him raising $504 a day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $35,280.

Sen. Ben Nelson raised $2,257,165 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of his career. His first day in office, as a senator, was January 3, 2001. In total, he has served 3,118 days as a United States Senator. This works out to him raising $724 a day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $50,680.

Sen. Olympia Snowe raised $1,147,630 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of her career. Her first day in office was January 4, 1995. In total, she has served 5,309 days as a United States Senator. This calculates out to her raising $216 every day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $15,120.

Sen. Ron Wyden raised $1,414,911 from the health and insurance sectors over the course of his career. His first day in office, as a senator, was February 6, 1996. In total, he has served 4,911 days as a United States Senator. This works out to $288 every day from the health and insurance sectors. Seventy more days would yield $20,160.

Factor in lobbying into these seventy days and the amount of spending around this bill could skyrocket. If we go by the numbers presented by the Washington Post, that the health sector is spending $1.4 million a day on lobbying, then we'll find another seventy days would allow the industry to spend another $98 million.

I think that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke spoke for all Americans when he testified yesterday that the one thing that has angered him the most during our current economic crisis is the ongoing bailout of A.I.G. So far, A.I.G. has received approximately $186 billion from the U.S. government in a bailout to protect the insurance giant's huge losses. But, as Josh Marshall noted over the weekend, the bailout of A.I.G. isn’t really a bailout of A.I.G., but a bailout of the counterparties that had insurance policies to back up their mortgage-backed securities (now known as toxic assets).

Despite the knowledge that the bailout of A.I.G. is, in fact, a bailout of counterparties, A.I.G. and the Federal Reserve refuse to disclose the identities of the counterparties. In a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. Ron Wyden berated Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the failure to release the names of the counterparties, the actual bailout recipients. Bernanke stated that “under normal conditions” the counterparties would “have a presumption of privacy”. As the New York Times' Joe Nocera put it two days ago,

“Gobs of tax money is going to bail out unnamed companies — and yet we aren’t allowed to know who they are, and are supposed to take it all on faith. You know those awful cases you read about every once in a while where a child dies in a troubled home — and then the state health department won’t divulge any information out of “privacy concerns”? This strikes me as the financial equivalent of those cases. As excuses go, it sure is convenient.”

It truly does not make sense that the taxpayers need to be left in the dark about whom we are bailing out. Representative government requires that our representatives and us little people know what we are spending our money on, particularly if that money is meant to prop up the bad decisions of private enterprise.

In conjunction with this transparency problem comes word that A.I.G. is paying two Washington spin machines, Hill & Knowlton and Burston Marsteller, to do positive PR for the belly-up company.

A.I.G. probably needs a spin army after the way they operated outside of regulations and oversight, essentially running a scam insurance business that could collapse numerous foreign banks. I'm just curious as to how a company that is nearly wholly owned by the U.S. government can pay for expensive PR firms.