This past Friday, Sunlight Foundation joined by Public Citizen hosted a special conference call briefing our members and supporters on the "Super Committee." Here’s what went down in case you missed the call (or you can listen to the audio below).

So far, the Committee has held two public meetings, with another one scheduled for Thursday (we’ll be covering it live at Sunlightlive.com). Tasked with the responsibility of cutting $1.5 trillion dollars from the national deficit, the "Super Committee" is a prime target for lobbying by wealthy special interests. Craig Holman, policy expert from Public Citizen, echoed those sentiments on the call and emphasized that, "This committee has unprecedented powers and unprecedented ties to special interest, and because of that it really does require unprecedented disclosures."

A federal bill has been introduced that directly addresses these issues: H.R. 2860, the "Deficit Committee Transparency Act". Tyler Wilson, a staffer from Representative David Loebsack’s office was on hand to provide an explanation of the bill which covers nearly all of the demands we have been pushing for. Despite the progress, Lisa Rosenberg from Sunlight Foundation reminded folks that "… great legislation, strong letters, media and direct lobbying aren't enough.We need your help to let these Super Committee members know that transparency does matter."

Here’s four simple ways to make your voice heard:

1. Join the campaign at sunlightfoundation.com/opensupercongress

2. Share the campaign with your friends and ask them to join to fight for transparency

3. Write to your representative and ask them to cosponsor H.R.2860

4. Go to your local district office of your senators or representative (or all three!) and tell them that you demand transparency from the “supercommittee.” You can look up your district office and even print out a sheet to leave at your local office here.

Did you missed the call? Listen to the recording below, and keep your eyes peeled for the next actions in this campaign.

Conference Call on the Super Committee by Sunlight Foundation

Today at 2pm ET, Sunlight and Public Citizen will be hosting a special conference call to update activists on the campaign to open the "Super Committee." We'd love to have you join us.

You can either listen to the call online from your computer or just call in to listen on your phone. You'll receive a link to listen to the call as well as a toll-free number when you register.

Register for the call here: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/63xt2chekgp8

Sunlight's Lisa Rosenberg and Public Citizen's Craig Holman will provide background on the Super Committee and answer questions, and we'll get an update from behind the scenes on Capitol Hill with Tyler Wilson, a staffer from Representative Loebsack’s office. Representative Loebsack is one of the sponsors of bipartisan transparency legislation, H.R.2860, the Deficit Committee Transparency Act introduced last week that would ensure real-time lobbying and campaign finance disclosure for members of the "Super Committee."

Our conversation will also give you a chance to hear from other transparency activists around the country who have made their voices heard at their local representatives’ offices and answer any questions you might have -- whether about the district office visits or about developments with the Super Committee.

Hope to talk to you at 2pm today!

In his first extensive interview about his membership on the Super Committee—the super powerful deficit reduction committee charged with finding $1.5 trillion in cuts to the federal budget—Senator John Kerry said he will give up fundraising while the Super Committee is doing its work. He will also limit his meetings with lobbyists, saying:

I’m not meeting with a lot of lobbyists; I’m meeting with people I choose to meet with, who can inform me, assist in the process of crunching numbers and dealing with consequences, and so forth.

Full disclosure: I worked for Senator Kerry a decade ago, making me one of those hundred or so registered lobbyists with ties to Super Committee members. While the Senator is on the right track, he should ensure that any campaign contributions or special interest meetings that might appear to influence his work on the Super Committee are exposed to sunlight in real time.

By instituting a moratorium on fundraisers, Senator Kerry is attempting to insulate himself from being lobbied by people while they are handing over bundles of checks. But it won’t necessarily stop checks from flowing into his campaign coffers while the Super Committee is at work. And, because of the timing of the campaign finance disclosure calendar, contributions to Super Committee members will be hidden until after the committee wraps up. Just as members of Congress must disclose within 48 hours contributions they receive within 20 days of an election, Super Committee members should disclose campaign contributions within 48 hours of receipt. Only with real time disclosure will the public know, before the barn door is closed and the Super Committee makes its recommendations, who might be trying to gain access or curry favor with any of the its members.

Senator Kerry’s statement not to meet with “a lot of lobbyists” leaves room for him and his staff to meet with some, not to mention the many non-lobbyist lobbyists—defense contractors, heads of hospitals and others—who aren’t registered to lobby but who have a huge interest in the Super Committee’s recommendations.

This is not to suggest that Kerry has any intention of meeting with such powerful stakeholders. His statement indicates that he is more interested in meeting with numbers people and actuarial types who can hammer out with him the impact of any proposed cut—which sounds very much like the John Kerry I worked for those many years ago. But if the Senator wants to demonstrate his commitment to making his deficit cutting decisions free from powerful outside influences, he has a simple tool: He should disclose all of the meetings he and his staff have with outsiders about the Super Committee within 48 hours.

Sunlight strongly supports HR 2860, the Deficit Committee Transparency Act, a bill that would impose transparency requirements, like real time disclosure of meetings and campaign contributions, on all Super Committee members. Since time is short and the wheels of Congress turn slowly, we also urge all 12 Super Committee members not to wait for transparency legislation to pass, and instead voluntarily disclose, in real time, meetings they have with special interests and campaign contributions they receive.

A number of press reports suggest today that the Super Committee's rules permit it to close meetings to the public. Here's the Hill:

Under a rules package that was unanimously approved during the first supercommittee meeting, the 12-member panel can go into a secret meeting if a majority of seven members agrees to do so. Otherwise, meetings are to be held in public.

This may seem extraordinary, but this is how all Congressional committees work.  If they meet to consider national security information, or trade secrets, they're allowed to have a public vote where they decide to go into closed session.  These procedures are laid out in the House and Senate Rules, and apply similarly in both chambers.

The Rules of the House and Senate that govern closing meetings, House Rule XI and Senate Rule XXVI, are actually incorporated into the Rules of the Joint Committee (or "Super Committee"):

2. The rules of the Senate and the House of Representatives, to the extent that they are applicable to committees, including rule XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate and clause 2 of rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 112th Congress, and do not conflict with the applicable provisions of the Budget Control Act, shall govern the proceedings of the Joint Select Committee.

So they still apply.  The committee will only be able to close its official meetings to the public if they vote publicly to do so, and if they have a strong justification.  Political inconvenience isn't among them.

The Super Committee's just-posted rules do say that the meetings can be shut:

  2. Each hearing and meeting of the Joint Select Committee shall be open to the public and the media unless the Joint Select Committee, in open session and a quorum being present, determines by majority vote that such hearing or meeting shall be held in closed session.  No vote on the recommendations, report or legislative language of the Joint Select Committee, or amendment thereto, may be taken in closed session.

But again, permitting the meetings to be shut doesn't override the House and Senate Rules that dictate the conditions by which that is permissible, especially since the Joint Committee rules explicitly invoke those particular sections.  As far as we can tell, the Super Committee's rules dictate that their official meetings will be public, and have no unusual provision allowing them to close them capriciously.

In other good news, the Super Committee will be getting a website, posting its amendments and votes online, and generally providing video and audio coverage of their proceedings.  (Today's hearing was covered by C-SPAN, and also streamed live by Rep. Camp.)

The "Super Committee" has just finished its first organizational meeting, and we now know a little more about how it's going to operate.  While the committee has yet to publish its rules, they've been adopted, and discussed briefly during this first meeting.

Most significantly, it's become clear that the joint committee will have public meetings.  This hasn't been clear, or required, since the law creating the joint committee was first passed over a month ago.  As we've noted before, it's an enormous relief that the committee has recognized the necessity of having official meetings in public, since a failure to do so would have been disastrously misguided. The announcement is also a response to the broad call for public meetings articulated by citizens, groups, and other lawmakers.  Of course, we'll have to see the actual rules to see how the requirement is worded.

Senator Murray also made clear that this committee is going to operate in a similar manner to other congressional committees, in accordance with typical chamber rules, allowing other working meetings to take place in private.  Interestingly, Senator Kyl suggested that the joint committee's final work will need to be online for 48 hours before the final vote.  It's unclear what he's referring to -- this could be a committee rule, or simply the way the members have agreed to do business.  While Sunlight would prefer a full 72 hours before a final vote, it would be fantastic news if the committee is already committing to a final, online review period for their work.  Without that commitment, the public could end up only analyzing the committee's work after they've approved it (much like the law that created the Super Committee).  We're seeking clarification, and will update when we find out if this is a rule, or a commitment among members, or something else.

As we expected, the committee's rules probably don't have anything to say about lobbying or campaign finance disclosure. That information is absolutely essential to an accountable process, since existing requirements would only let us know what's happening in mid-January, well after the committee's work is done.

We're pushing for committee members to voluntarily disclose lobbying and campaign finance information, online, and in real-time, and we're also pushing for adoption of the Deficit Committee Transparency Act, introduced yesterday.

Update: Here's part of Murray's statement.

Update 2: Here's Kyl.

Update 3:

The rules have now been released, for a complete update see this post.  On the question of Kyl's talk of 48 hours, the rules suggest that he's talking about getting the bill done in time to have a CBO estimate to the committee members before final consideration, so it looks like the committee hasn't committed at all to having their final product online before final consideration.

Representatives Loebsack (D-IA), Quigley (D-IL) and Renacci (R-OH) introduced the Deficit Committee Transparency Act today, an important bill that would shine a light on efforts by outside interests to sway the twelve members of the Committee on Deficit Reduction, whether by lobbying them or donating to their campaigns. The bill would also require the committee’s report to be made public for 72 hours before it is voted on, and mandate the creation of a web site so all disclosure information and hearings will be publicly available online in a central location. Sunlight strongly supports this effort and applauds the bill’s cosponsors for recognizing the critical need to shine a light on avenues of access and influence to Super Committee members.

Unfortunately, as the Super Committee holds its first official meeting on Thursday, the chances of this bill being enacted before then are, to put it mildly, slim. But members of the Super Committee are in the process of establishing rules for the committee and this bill should be a blueprint to guide them.

The bill’s authors recognize that the unprecedented powers granted to Super Committee members should be paired with full transparency of their work. There already has been direct pressure from lobbyists and other interested parties asking the committee members to salvage some programs or cut others. Under this bill, the public, as well as the members of Congress whose clout has been diminished because they weren’t granted a spot on the Super Committee, should know, in real time, who is asking for what.

The transparency provisions in the bill are not unprecedented and members of Congress have no legitimate reason to resist them. For example, the Obama administration required meetings to be disclosed when special interests lobbied the executive branch on the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Likewise, real time disclosure of campaign contributions is also standard. Under current law, if a contribution is given within 20 days of an election, it must be reported within 48 hours. Given the short life of the Super Committee, whose work must be wrapped up before the end of the year, failure to require reporting of contributions in 48 hours means campaign contributions to Super Committee members will be hidden until after the committee’s work is complete.

If these proposals are enacted, they will help to begin to rebuild the public’s trust in the budget process. If time constraints or other pressures prevent this common sense bill from becoming law, we would hope the bill’s provisions are contained in committee rules. On the other hand, if transparency measures are ignored and the work of the Super Committee is hidden behind a veil of secrecy, it will reinforce the public’s mistrust of the process and will delegitimize the committee’s work.

We're enormously relieved to read that the Super Committee will hold public meetings:

Both meetings are open to the public and the press, according to the release from Hensarling and Murray.

This is actually the first time we've been sure that the new Joint Committee on Debt Reduction was formed in late July, despite press broad advocacy and press coverage, and even an explicit call from Leader Pelosi.

Cochairs Hensarling and Murray have made the right decision, as they apparently recognized that meeting entirely in private would be wildly inappropriate, given the Super Committee's broad, sweeping mandate.

Citizens, organizations, and Members of Congress all helped make clear that the Super Committee's official meetings must be public.  Our work isn't done yet, though.

Nothing guarantees that the rest of the Super Committee's official meetings will be public, and, perhaps more importantly now, we've got to be sure that lobbying and campaign finance disclosures for the Super Committee members are public in near real time.  The status quo is utterly unacceptable, as the lobbying and campaign finance reports won't be public until well after the committee's work is done -- in mid-January.

So we're very glad the Super Committee is listening, because holding a few meetings in public is only the first step.

Just a reminder: the issue of transparency for the Super Committee isn't going away.

It's been three weeks since the debt ceiling law was passed that created the new joint committee, and we still don't know how open it will be in its work, or even if it'll hold public meetings.

Sunlight will be all over this issue every step of the way, and we've put together a new resources page so you can see the variety of things we're pursuing.  We'll be adding more as we go.

A bipartisan group of Members of Congress sent a letter to House and Senate leadership outlining specific transparency recommendations for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, aka the Super Committee.  The letter echoes Sunlight’s proposals for Super Committee transparency, calling for live broadcast of committee meetings; posting of the Super Committee’s final recommendations for 72 hours prior to a final committee vote; weekly posting of campaign contributions received by committee members; and weekly posting of meetings between committee members and special interests.

If these common sense proposals are enacted, they will help to begin to rebuild the public’s trust in the budget process. On the other hand, shrouding the work of the Super Committee behind a veil of secrecy will delegitimize its work, harkening back to the days when decisions were made in smoke filled rooms where money and power changed hands without pubic scrutiny.

None of the four proposals is controversial.  Ensuring the meetings and hearings of the Super Committee are public and online should be so obvious as to be a given. Given the importance of the Super Committee’s work, its hearings should not be held to a lesser standard than any other congressional committee—all of which assume hearings will be public unless national security would be at risk. Arguments that committee members won’t be able to deliberate if the meetings are public are, in a word, silly.  Public hearings will in no way thwart members from speaking and negotiating privately with one another. Making hearings public will provide an important window into the committee’s goals, its process and its progress.

The remainder of the recommendations similarly fall into a “been there, done that” category so should not be objectionable. Speaker Boehner has already endorsed a 72-hour rule for legislation. Seventy-two hours of public scrutiny and debate should likewise be required before a vote on the Super Committee’s recommendations.  Under current law, campaign contributions are public, and if they are given within 20 days of an election, they must be reported within 48 hours. Given the short life of the Super Committee, anything less frequent than the weekly reporting called for here risks nondisclosure of contributions until after the committee’s work is complete. Finally, as the letter points out, disclosure of meetings by lobbyists and other special interests has been required under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  Given that the Super Committee lobbying frenzy has already begun, the public should be made aware of who is asking for what.

When they return from recess, House and Senate leaders should announce that these common sense transparency measures will be adopted to ensure accountability and integrity in the Super Committee process.

Recently, OpenCongress, a joint project of The Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation announced a new and improved way of contacting your Members of Congress.

Open Congress version 3 is a new, free & open-source public resource website that helps both groups and individuals email their members of Congress from one webpage while tracking and sharing their correspondence. Two of the most engaging tools of OpenCongress version 3 are:

1. Contact Congress: which lets you write a letter to all three of your members of Congress and send it to their email addresses. It also enables you to track responses, and share your letter with the OpenCongress community and your social media followers.

2. My OC Groups: which is an open-source social network, provides members with the tools to share their position on an issue and work together on watchdogging, educating and organizing actions directed at Congress. My OC Groups can be used by both organizations and individuals.

My OC Groups can help you connect with established organizations and groups that are already working on the same issues that you are interested in. For instance, as I am interested in government transparency, I searched using keywords such as “transparency” and then joined the Sunlight Foundation OpenCongress Group (which you too can join). So now, together as a group, we can illustrate our position regarding a specific bill in Congress.

What is most empowering, however, is that as an individual, you can be a lead organizer by starting your own group and finding others like you to rally behind a common interest. In essence, it gives you the perfect resources to self organize!

If you’ve been following the debt ceiling debate and the recent creation of a “Super Committee” in Congress, you’ll know that this is the perfect time to contact our representatives to demand a more open and accountable government. So I wrote to my representatives -- here’s how:

First I chose S.365  - The Budget Control Act of 2011 - as the bill I was interested in. The S. 365 is the debt ceiling negotiations bill which aside from increasing the debt ceiling, also required the creation of a Joint Select Committee now known as the “SuperCommittee”. Then I tracked it (one has the option to either support, oppose or track any bill).

After deciding whether you want to support, oppose or simply track a bill, the next step is to fill in your contact information (the letter can not be sent without all required information).

I used the message builder (which is great to use because it contains detailed information about the bill -- including last action taken on the bill, committee assigned to it, the highest rated articles on it and most commented sections of the bill). In my letter, I also asked my Members of Congress to make sure that transparency is observed during the joint committee’s meetings including disclosure of all powerful interests connected to any Committee member.

Lastly, I got a message that all three of my Members of Congress have been emailed and was given the option of sharing my correspondence via social media.

You might notice below I got an error message for two of my representatives. This is happening in a small minority of cases (unfortunately, those include my district). It generally means that a Member’s webform isn’t configured properly in the OpenCongress “Formaggedon” module or that their .gov website has changed, but the bugs are being rapidly worked out.

If you notice other kinks while using the tool, please shoot us a note in the comments section.

Check this out to see what else OpenCongress can do for you and/or your organization including providing you with new widgets, Facebook Connect and API enhancements.

Note: It is advisable to check your account settings to “public” in order for other users to connect with you.

We hope you’ll join us in not just using Open Congress v.3 but also to let Congress know we need the new “Super Congress” to be open and transparent. Please join us! And feel free to leave your thoughts or impressions on the new tools in the comments.