As my colleague Bill Allison has already pointed out, a page one story in today’s Washington Post – A Quiet Break for Corporations – pulls back the curtain on the little-known practice of tariff suspension bills introduced in Congress to help specific corporations.
Fortunately the story includes a link to the key source for their information on this, the website of the US International Trade Commission. If you dig through that site to this page you’ll find the complete list of tariff bills introduced in the 109th Congress, along with the sponsor, the date, and a description of the item for which the tariff is being suspended or reduced.
Continue readingAttention to Earmarks Yields Results
Robert McElroy of the excellent and incredibly informative TheWeekinCongress.com dropped us a line saying,
the House bill report on military commissions this week now includes a section stating whether or not there are earmarks in the bill. That came as a result of the House Resolution last week.He adds that it's the attention that the blogosphere has directed to this issue that's made the difference. Continue reading
Another Kind of Earmark
Joe Stephens reports in this morning's Washington Post on a practice we wondered about a while back: members of Congress who sponsor "temporary duty suspensions" -- cuts in the taxes assessed on a specific imported item. (Thomas, the Library of Congress's online tool for tracking legislation, lists hundreds of them when you search for the phrase, "temporary suspension of duty.") Each tariff suspension can cost the Treasury as much as $500,000--that is, it's a $500,000 tax break targeted to some special interest that asked for the tariff suspension.
Continue readingKeeping the Spotlight on Earmarks
Jonathan Allen, writing in The Hill, exposes some earmarks sponsored by Rep. Steve Chabot for institutions with connections to some of his closest political supporters (read: donors and fundraisers). Reading the story, I couldn't help but think how much it was like our own Exposing Earmarks effort that focused on H.R. 5647, the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill--find the earmarks, tie them to a member of Congress, and then look into who's benefiting. First, what makes Allen's story in The Hill so interesting is that it rather perfectly illustrates one of the main ways in which earmarks are abused:
Continue readingFocus On Sen. Mitch McConnell
My conversations yesterday with senior staffers on the Hill about the prognosis of electronic filing for Senate campaign finance reports were illuminating. The bill is stuck in the Rules Committee which at this point in the legislative cycle means it's not happening. I was told that only if there was unanimous consent would the legislation move, but that was unlikely because there is one key opponent - Senator Mitch McConnell.
I had to laugh: the Senator known as the Darth Vader of campaign finance reform - who used to defend his opposition to that by calling for more disclosure - is now out to kill even disclosure! In the context of debating a disclosure amendment about union funds in 2001, McConnell said:
Continue readingSenate Reports on Paper? The Blogosphere Can’t Believe It!
Yesterday’s K Street Confidential column in the Washington Post by Jeffrey Birnbaum seems to have ignited a brushfire in the blogosphere. Birnbaum’s subject for the day was the fact that candidates for the U.S. Senate – unlike anyone else at the federal level – still file their campaign reports on paper rather than electronically.
(This means weeks of delay in getting the information into a searchable format, and expending taxpayer funds to hand-input paper records from the campaigns into computer format. See my post from yesterday)
Continue readingOld Tricks Never Die (Or Even Fade Away)
There’s a story in today’s New York Times about insurance giant AIG deftly avoiding New York state’s contribution limits by bundling their gifts to favored politicians through a network of little-known subsidiaries. The story brought back a flood of old memories for me; bundling through subsidiaries was one of the first tricks of the campaign finance game that I first observed in Alaska when I started tracking money in politics more than 20 years ago.
Here’s how it worked for AIG. New York State allows corporate contributions of up to $5,000. So back in 2003, when AIG wanted to give big money to Gov. George Pataki, for example, they wrote 18 checks on the same bank account – with consecutive check numbers – all listing different AIG subsidiaries as the donor. Grand total: $90,000 to the governor. (Click the attachment below for a chart showing the details.)
Bipartisan Transparency Push
On the heels of today’s Jeff Birnbaum article, “Support for Electronic Filing of Senate Candidates' Campaign-Finance Records Gains Momentum,” the blogosphere, left and right, has united to push Senators to file their campaign-finance records electronically. Bloggers from Daily Kos, Red State, HuffPo, Captain’s Quarters, Think Progress, and Wonkette are pushing for the passage of S. 1508, which would mandate electronic filing. S. 1508 is one of many transparency measures that have been languishing in Senate or House committees waiting for the kind of public pressure that bloggers brought to Coburn-Obama and will now hopefully bring to electronic filing. The following is a list of transparency bills that could use a helping hand:
Continue readingEarmark Lists: Look for Them Around October 1
Transparency freak that I am, all weekend I've been pondering (read, savoring) when we'd see the first earmark lists now mandated by House rules. And, thanks to Dana Chasin at OMB Watch, we now know it will be around October 1st when appropriations conference reports make it to the House floor or when an omnibus appropriations package comes under consideration.
The first bills likely to come to the floor are Homeland Security and Defense.
Corruption Not an Issue? Please!
Is corruption an issue or is it not an issue? The Washington Post puts out yet another article explaining how corruption is not a driving issue in campaigns despite the myriad scandals in Washington. They then trot out Sen. Conrad Burns’ reelection campaign as an example where the Senator’s close ties to Jack Abramoff are not affecting the race. Please! Burns has been hit on ethics issues for almost a year now and you’re telling me that has nothing to do with the recent polls showing him down nine points in the polls.
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