Sunlight Foundation

Washington, DC - Last night during the State of the Union address, President Obama made transparency a cornerstone issue for his administration this year. He called for the establishment of a single, Congress-wide database to track earmarks; better and more complete lobbying disclosure and a concerted effort to change the campaign finance laws to reflect the new realities created by last week’s Supreme Court decision on the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) case. Since these issues strongly reflect the Sunlight Foundation’s mission, it has issued policy proposals to help Congress and the White House achieve these goals.

"The Sunlight Foundation is extremely happy to see President Obama reaffirm his commitment to create government transparency, end earmark abuse and disclose lobbyist activities," said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. “We hope to work with the president and Congress to implement solutions to bring more information about earmarks, lobbyists and campaign finance online in real time, so it can be made truly available to the public.”

Sunlight has long advocated for technological solutions to ensure that earmarks reflect the public interest, and formally proposed an online, searchable database of earmark request disclosures in March of 2008 in its Transparency in Government Act, posted to PublicMarkup.org. There is a long history of lawmakers abusing earmarks, requesting funding to build bridges to nowhere and to reward political allies, family members and even for personal enrichment. The president’s proposal to create a centralized database with information posted on earmarks before final decisions are made is a much needed change.

Under President Obama’s plan, each time a lobbyist is in contact with an elected official or aide, that contact would be reported. The Sunlight Foundation will continue to fight to ensure that those contacts are reported electronically, published promptly and maintained online in a downloadable, searchable, sortable format. Sunlight believes that disclosure should include all legislation and regulations discussed and all requests for specific services or government funding. These policy recommendations are available on Sunlight’s Web site at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/policy/documents/agenda/.

Finally, the president has called for legislative fixes for the drastic changes made to the campaign finance system in last week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. FEC. It is Sunlight’s belief that this decision requires an immediate update to the entire campaign finance disclosure law regime, and will advocate for new legislative solutions to cover everything from who has to disclose, what is required to be disclosed, how often, and in what form – whether the spending comes directly from corporations’ or unions’ treasuries, from lobbyists, political parties or the candidates themselves. (See this blog post for more details on Sunlight’s stance on the Citizens United case.)

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit that uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Visit SunlightFoundation.com to learn more about Sunlight’s projects, including Transparency Corps and Party Time.