The House of Representatives released its tabulations of members' office expenses--including personnel costs, travel, district office expenses and vehicle expenses--last Friday, and the Sunlight Foundation turned the 3,000 page PDF into a searchable database, enabling reporters and curious constituents to do easy aggregation.
Here are some snippets from the data:
-- Appropriations was the highest spenders among committees, totaling more than $4.6 million in the last quarter of 2009, followed by the Oversight & Reform and Energy & Commerce committees with just over $3 million each.
-- In addition to technology-related companies and suppliers such as Dell and Microsoft, the House also ...
Pentagon Weapons Test Report Harder to Get Since 9/11
Until Sept. 11, 2001, a little-known but indispensible annual report by the Defense Department gave the public a window into whether the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent each year led to weapons that work. Then, the reports by the Pentagons director of Operational Test and Evaluation were pulled from the website.
In the case of this specific report, the thinking was, why advertise that our weapons dont work, said Tom Christie, who was director of the test office from July 2001 through January 2005. The office was created by Congress to examine if weapons worked as well and ...
Former health policy aides try to shape ex-employers’ positions from K Street
At least 69 people formerly employed by some of the 40 or so Congressional leaders present at yesterday's healthcare summit have gone through the revolving door to lobby for the health industry, representing a combined 180 companies and trade associations, Center for Responsive Politics data shows. Many worked on health issues as Hill aides, garnering policy chops on the issues that matter to health insurance companies, medical professionals associations, and pharmaceutical companies. But they also have easier access to their former colleagues on Capitol Hill.
As Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff, Judith Lemons served continuously as the House ...
Health industry lobbyists have hosted scores of fundraisers for summit attendees
An on-the-fly analysis by the Sunlight Foundation shows that 84 lobbyists who represent a combined 266 health care and medical association interests have hosted a total of 61 fundraisers--that we know about--benefiting the campaigns of 18 of the approximately 40 Congressional leaders in attendance at today's health care summit.
That's not including fundraisers hosted by the companies' and trade groups' PACs themselves, though they also host such events. Maybe these lobbyists just wanted to make sure these lawmakers had enough funds to pay their monthly premiums?
Here's the list, compiled by matching host names from PoliticalPartytime.org ...
Few members at the summit own healthcare stock
A quick analysis of personal financial disclosures of Members of Congress shows that very few of them present at the healthcare summit own stock in the healthcare industry.
Here's a spreadsheet with data from opensecrets.org.
SunlightLive covers health care summit
The Sunlight Foundation has all hands on deck today providing context for today's bipartisan healthcare summit in real time. Stay tuned all day for updates.
A quick analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data shows that when campaign contributions to the group of roughly 40 party leaders present are tallied, the health professional, insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital and health services/HMO industries all rank within the top 16--meaning those tasked with reforming the industry have also relied upon it more heavily than almost any other to stay in office. (Lobbyists rank 7th.)
Top-contributing industries, 2009-2010
GSA Tracks Contractors Work in Database Off-Limits to Public
Given the half-trillion dollars spent on federal contracting every year, its comforting to know that the U.S. government has a massive database that tracks contractors past performance.
Too bad it cant be tapped by the public. Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), says this is like not allowing a parent to see their childs report card.
The Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) is managed by the General Services Administration.
According to the GSA, the database aggregates a vast amount of information from disparate sources into ratings that can be used to quickly distinguish ...
Ten Million CIA Documents Require In-Person Visit
The Central Intelligence Agency maintains more than 10 million pages of declassified, post-World War II documents, covering everything from the birth of the CIA to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The documents are publicly available - assuming one is willing to drive to the National Archives complex in College Park, Maryland, sit at one of four computer terminals in the library, and print dozens, hundreds, or thousands of pages.
Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, argues that the documents, accessible through the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST), should simply be put ...
More laws, longer sentences fuel explosive growth of federal criminal system
The top issue: unemployment
Our friend Jim Harper has written a post noting that one of the bills made available for comments on his WashingtonWatch.com site (full disclosure: Sunlight has supported it financially) has gotten more than 100,000 comments from users of the site. To me, that seems like a stupendous total for a site that tracks legislation.
So what's drawn so much interest? It's not the House or Senate version of health care. It's not the cap and trade bill designed to marginally address climate change. It's not the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $787 billion ...
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