Sunlight Foundation

Washington, DC-The Sunlight Foundation lauds Senators Coburn (R-OK), Feingold (D-WI), Gillibrand (D-NY) and McCain (R-AZ) in the Senate and Representatives Cassidy (R-LA) and Speier (D-CA) in the House for introducing landmark legislation today that would require Congress to create an online, searchable database for all earmark requests. 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 its PublicMarkup.org website.

"Currently, information on earmarks is scattered across more than 559 websites, making it virtually impossible for even the most seasoned earmark researcher to follow the money, let alone constituents," said Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation. "The Earmark Transparency Act introduced today in the House and Senate solves that problem by unifying all earmark requests in one single database, therefore giving constituents one place to look to learn what their elected representatives are funding. This will empower them to then determine for themselves whether lawmakers are using earmarks to meet pressing needs or reward political supporters."

The legislation directs the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the Secretary of the Senate, within six months of enactment, to establish a public searchable website that lists all earmark requests, including detailed information such as the bill in which the request is made, who originally asked the lawmaker to make the spending request, the amount of the earmark request and more.

It is the Sunlight Foundation's view that the Earmark Transparency Act improves upon measures taken last year by the leadership in the House and Senate that required all lawmakers requesting earmarks to post their requests on their official websites. These requests were not disclosed in a standard method or location, making them difficult to track. This new legislation proposes a single, Congress-wide access point, and also fulfills the kind of earmark disclosure President Obama called for in the State of the Union Address earlier this year.

For more information on earmark reform legislation, visit Sunlight's blog at and the OpenCongress.org Wiki.

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 TransparencyData.com and Party Time.

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