Jon Henke, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s New Media Advisor, is saying that Sen. Byrd’s opposition to the line-item veto was a part of the series of events that led to the stalling of the ethics bill.
It was Senator Byrd, not the Republicans, who derailed the ethics reform vote. Here’s Harry Reid last night, discussing the agreement between the Republican and Democratic leadership that would allow the ethics reform bill and the Gregg Amendment to move forward to a vote.
“Mr. President, to bring everyone up to date as to where we are, I made a good-faith offer to the minority that we will put the line-item veto off to another day. Senator Byrd was not agreeable to that. I talked to Senator Byrd on more than one occasion this evening, the last time for a significant amount of time, and he simply believes this line-item veto is a matter of great constitutional import, that for us to agree at this time to debate this would be wrong and that he simply will not do that.” -- (Sen. Harry Reid, Congressional Record, 1/17/07, p. S647)
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Rumors of a Deal to Save the Ethics Bill
Although it seems that the ethics bill is dead and this afternoon's cloture vote this afternoon is all about message, one contact just informed us that the Democrats and Republicans are actually close to a deal. The vote is scheduled to take place between 3 and 6. If they do come to an agreement, the bill should be finished tomorrow. If it does go through, we are still hoping -- though it is a long shot -- that the managers will accept a combination of language that requires the Senate to come up with a way to get personal financial disclosure reports online. We hear that Senator Cardin will be working to get this in a manager's amendment.
Continue readingRepublicans Block Ethics Bill Over Line-Item Veto
Late last night the Senate Republicans blocked action on the bipartisan ethics legislation that they had been debating since the opening of the 110th Congress. Republicans blocked the measure because Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats refused to vote on an unrelated amendment that would give the President line-item veto authority, a transfer of power that was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court back in 1998. (See these CRS Reports on Line-Item Veto: 1, 2.) Sen. Reid had already stated that amendments that were nongermane to ethics and lobbying reform, including amendments related to campaign finance issues, would not be addressed during this debate. Reid even told Sen. Judd Gregg, the proponent of the line-item veto amendment, that the Senate would debate the issue separately in the future.
Continue readingTransparency Agenda Update
There is a lot happening in the Senate today. By the end of the day, we will likely know where our efforts to get contemporaneous online filing of Senate reports stands. We have a new, part time lobbyist, Lisa Rosenberg, to push our short term agenda. In the context of the reform bill currently in the Senate, this means she is working to ensure that the following provisions are included:
- All earmarks are online prior to a vote with the names of the sponsors of the earmarks;
- All travel documents are online in a searchable and sortable format;and,
- Personal financial disclosure forms are online immediately after being filed. Continue reading
Announcing a $2 Million Investment from Omidyar Network in Sunlight
We are so pleased today to announce an investment of $2 million from Omidyar Network in the Sunlight Foundation. The investment will enable us to increase the number of "transparency grants" we make and provide general support, particuarly for expanding the capacity of the work of our Sunlight Labs.
Sunlight and the Omidyar Network share a fundamental belief in the value of transparency, the potential for new technologies to connect individuals to both information and others who share their interests, and the ability for citizens to influence the issues that impact their lives. We really couldn't have found a better partner. This thrlling investment will enable us and our partners to make giant steps this year (just our second year of operation) to bring Congress into the 21st century, and make it more transparent.
Continue readingResearch Request on Spousal Lobbying
Here's an experiment occasioned by the excellent report by John Solomon of the Washington Post on spouses of members of Congress who lobby. Solomon identifies 6 lawmakers married to registered lobbyists (listed below). Is it possible, after reading the lobby disclosure reports that list these spouses (I've linked the results page in the Senate Office of Public Records page for each of them, making it easy to find the reports) to determine whether the member votes for the spouse's clients' interests?
Continue readingThe Minimum Wage, Pelosi, Tuna and American Samoa
Red State's Erick asked the right kinds of questions when he heard that American Samoa, a U.S. possession, would continue to be exempt from the U.S. minimum wage (while the Northern Marianas islands, another possession, would be subject to them), but he didn't know where to get the answers (and apparently ended up relying on some bogus information). Erick suggests that the reason American Samoa got the special treatment was self-interest on the part of Speaker Pelosi and her husband:
Continue readingDurbin Amendment Passes
Did anybody vote against this thing? I don’t think so. The Durbin amendment, a compromise amendment between Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over earmarking, passed unanimously just now. The earmark reform in the Senate is now equivalent to that passed in the House plus it will require a list of earmarks included in a given bill to be put online 48 hours prior to a vote. Even Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) voted for it, and if you read Bill’s post below that should come as a shock. Final vote tally to strengthen earmark disclosure: 98-0.
Continue readingByrd’s Sweet Nothings on Earmarks
Andy Roth of the Club for Growth quotes Sen. Robert Byrd on the Senate floor: "Hear me now! There is nothing, nothing, nothing inherently wrong with earmarks." Absolutely, Senator, so it would go without saying, one would presume, that no member of Congress could conceivably have any reason to object to taking responsibility for his own earmarks by attaching his or her name to each and every one of them, as well as the name of the beneficiary of the taxpayer largesse. Does the Senator, in other words, agree that there is nothing, nothing, nothing inherently wrong with transparency and accountability?
Continue readingThe Sunlight-Berkman Conference on Political Information was a success
Yesterday the Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted the Sunlight-Berkman Conference on Political Information. Our new intern Andrew MacRae attended the Conference in Boston and wrote up this review of the day:
On January 15th, 2007, the Sunlight Foundation in cooperation with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society held an all day workgroup entitled “Local Political Information in an Internet Era”. The session brought together bloggers and organizations, in an attempt to share data, goals and thoughts. For addition coverage see what other participants had to say, Ethan Zuckerman, Jake Shapiro, John Palfrey, Dan Gillmor, David Weinberger and more.
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