Add Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to the list of members who publish lists of earmarks (Issa's for 2006 is here). His chief of staff, Dale Neugebauer, emailed this a little while ago:
In your rating of Rep. Issa's web site you noted that our site did not include a list of earmark requests. Rep. Issa did publicly release the list of 2006 earmark requests and posted the press release on that section of our website. Here's the link... Continue reading
Rep. John T. Doolittle, R-Calif., Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and three other members post their daily schedules--including who they're meeting with--on their official, taxpayer-supported Web sites. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, both offer lists of the earmarks they've requested. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., posts information on his interventions with government regulatory agencies. Meanwhile, 374 congressional Web sites failed to provide basic information on what the member does in Washington, from providing the name or names of committees served on to the bills they sponsor, citizen journalists found.
Continue readingRobert Novak's latest column repeats, more or less, the information we heard originally from Mark Tapscott -- that fear of offending congressional appropriators led the White House to derail OMB's release of the earmark database OMB announced on January 25, 2007. We've been hearing a very different tale from the Office of Management and Budget, one which I think is rather plausible, as to why they haven't released the whole database. Appropriators are a relatively limited pool of members--it may well be worth the effort to start calling each of their offices and asking their member to go on the record, either supporting or opposing, OMB's effort to provide greater transparency to the federal budget through its disclosure of earmarks, to determine whether they were offended. That still might not answer the question of why OMB delayed the database to everyone's satisfaction, but it would let appropriators know that we're watching them too...
Continue readingHere's a (now longish) quick follow up on a post I wrote on Monday about a conversation I'd had with Rob Lehman, chief of staff of the Office of Management and Budget, about their efforts to get an online database of individual earmarks up on March 12 (they fell a little short, and were only able to post summary data). Yesterday, I called Lehman back to ask him how things were going, and to see if I could get a few more useful details about OMB's effort. Here's a brief summary of what I learned:
Continue readingSpeaking of the Center for Responsive Politics, it's probably worth noting that they've issued some useful suggestions to increase government transparency and the ease of accessing government records, all in time for Sunshine Week. Also worth noting that they provide a list of contacts at the bottom of the page so you can pass on their suggestions. They're all good, but here's one that I think is tremendously important:
Politicians might call it party-building, but the contributions they make from their personal political action committees (a.k.a. leadership PACs) seem more like career-building, as they collect chits to secure a committee chairmanship or leadership position. Continue reading
Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics have released updated numbers of 2006 lobbying. They note that lobbyists disclosed that they were paid some $2.45 billion in 2006 to influence Congress and the executive branch of government--which amounted to a mere 1.7 percent increase over 2005. The dot-com like surge of lobbyist expenditures of the previous year (from $2.19 billion in 2004 to $2.41 million in 2005, according to the chart) wasn't repeated, but there's also no indication that K Street spending is a bubble about to burst.
Continue readingWe've been following the progress of a couple of bills making their way through Congress. H.R. 1309 puts a little more teeth in our Freedom of Information Act--the main lever that the press and the public has for prying documents out of the executive branch (and see here for useful FOIA tips maintained by Investigative Reporters & Editors), while S. 223 would, for the first time, require campaign committees of Senate candidates to file their contribution and expenditure information electronically with the Federal Election Commission rather than sending in stacks of paper (both House and Presidential candidates file electronically).
Continue readingI just had a chat with Rob Lehman, the chief of staff of Office of Management and Budget, who assured me that, contrary to this report, there is no "caving" on their announced intention to publish a comprehensive list of earmarks online. Lehman explained that OMB's release today will be something less than the complete database that would "identify and catalogue earmarks in all appropriations bills and certain authorization bills, including report language," in part because the data isn't ready. Those of us who've worked with federal data, especially federal data drawn from multiple agencies, would probably agree that the one week OMB gave itself to review all the data followed by one week to post it all online was probably overly ambitious.
Continue readingAnd then there were none! Citizen journalists from 39 states and the District of Columbia have finished investigating the official, taxpayer-provided Web sites of members of Congress. We'll swing into action on the fact checking and follow ups...
Continue readingFedSpending.org, the go-to site for all government spending information, has now added some 2006 data--the full set isn't available from the Feds just yet--plus some new and improved features for keeping track of how Washington manages our money. Congratulations to all at OMB Watch on the upgrades and updates. I'm appending the press release below, but what I think might be the coolest new feature is the summary data, which provides a really nice snapshot--here's Lockheed Martin, and here's Halliburton. Compare the trend boxes.
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