All posts by NishaT

Congress is in session right now. Did they read the bills they are debating at this moment

This is why the Sunlight Foundation has been advocating for a 72 hour rule that would require legislation to be posted online for 3 days before debate.  

We NOW have a bill that needs to be passed.  Reps. Baird and Culberson have introduced the 72 hour rule legislation to the House of Representatives, H. Res 554 .  This is fantastic it means that we are one step closer really Reading the Bill.

We need as many cosponsors as possible  I am asking you not only to sign our petition and call your representative but also to ask others to call and sign.  If ten people call your representatives it makes an impact.  

We also need to reach 15,000 petition signatures to present to Congress to show that the people of this country want better laws and want lawmakers to read the legislation they pass.

We know this idea is a no brainer but it is up to us to let our lawmakers know that we are tired of debacles like the Patriot Act or Recovery bill that are snuck through without even time to skim.  

Only if we work together can we make this a reality.  Let’s get to work.  Go to ReadtheBill.org to call your Representative.  

Disclaimer: I am the online organizer and outreach coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation

Help Us Increase Campaign Finance Disclosure – Pass S. 233!

(Cross posted from the The Sunlight Foundation)

The Sunlight Foundation launched a new web site, Pass223.com, to harness the distributed power of the Internet to pressure the Senate into increasing disclosure of campaign contributions by passing a bill – S. 223, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act – requiring senators to file their contribution reports electronically.

We need your help to pass this bill. Please follow the link to Pass223.com and call your senators to find out where they stand on S. 223. The site has full instructions on who your senators are, how to call, what to say, and how to report back to us. For more detail on the bill, keep reading.

Currently, presidential candidates and candidates running for the House of Representatives file their campaign contributions in electronic form. Electronic filing speeds the process by which campaign contribution data reaches the public over the Internet, allowing citizens and journalists to more easily spot a conflict of interest or an inappropriate contribution. Filers in the Senate do not file electronically, delaying disclosure by weeks and possibly months.

Passage of S. 223 appears to be a “no-brainer,” and isn’t publicly opposed by any senator. However, at every step of the way over the past year and a half the bill has been interrupted and blocked for a variety of reasons.

Right now, Sen. John Ensign (pronounced en-sen) is blocking the bill by insisting on adding a poison pill amendment. This poison pill is meant to protect senators from legitimate ethics complaints filed by outside groups. The amendment would impose an unconstitutional burden on on charities, religious organizations and other nonprofits by forcing them to disclose their donors when they file ethics complaints against sitting senators. Ensign’s amendment is opposed by a group of non-profits, religious groups, and charities from the right and the left.

For S. 223 to pass, Ensign’s amendment must be defeated. And to do that, we need you help in identifying senators who OPPOSE Ensign and SUPPORT S. 223. This is a great chance to help pass a long overdue bill.

Go to Pass223.com and get started calling your senators (remember, you have two of them). Don’t forget to report back so that we know where these senators stand on increasing campaign finance disclosure.

Pass223.com is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation, Public Citizen, Public Campaign, Center for Responsive Politics, Campaign Finance Institute, Change Congress, and Open the Government.

(Disclaimer: I am the Online Organizer and Outreach Coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation)

Sunlight is Running the Numbers on Congressional Wealth

Cross posted from the Sunlight Foundation

Just as members of Congress are filing their latest annual personal disclosure reports (due this Thursday), we are launching “Fortune 535,” a new Web site which lets you track how much, or how little, lawmakers’ wealth has grown during the past 11 years — the period of time from which lawmakers’ personal financial data is available.

For the first time ever, we compiled and visualized online lawmakers’ net worth from personal financial disclosure filings to show the growth in net worth for each member of Congress from 1995 to 2006. These filings reveal lawmakers’ personal finances-assets, liabilities, outside income-and the gifts and travel provided for them by outside organizations. Fortune 535 also lets you compare the net worth growth of each lawmaker to that of the average American family, and lists the wealthiest lawmakers (Rep. Jane Harman, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. John Kerry), those with the greatest change in their net worth, those who began their congressional careers with no net worth and those whose net worth was less than $0 in 2006. Sen. Clinton, for example, started her Senate career with over $6 million in debt, but is now worth over $30 million.

One thing we learned while working on this project: measuring lawmakers’ net worth is very difficult (and sometimes impossible) because of the seriously flawed disclosure system used by members of Congress. Because the personal financial disclosure reports lawmakers file asks for assets and liabilities in ranges, we could not determine whether some lawmakers, like Speaker Pelosi, are extremely wealthy or on the verge of declaring bankruptcy (or somewhere in between). That’s why we support more precise reporting requirements as well as full online disclosure and preservation of lawmakers’ personal financial disclosure reports.

“Fortune 535” relies on the personal financial disclosure database at OpenSecrets.org and archive, but since that data only dates back to 1995, we dug through the archives of the Library of Congress Law Library to retrieve personal financial reports (required by law since 1978), that were previously only available on paper. We made available PDFs of these first personal financial disclosure reports filed by lawmakers, as part of Sunlight’s goal to make more government information publicly accessible on the Internet.

For each of the 535 members of Congress, there are 535 individual stories told through stock portfolios, rental houses, mortgages, student loans and ownership of stock in multi-million dollar corporations. The data we reveal should certainly raise questions for citizens and journalists to ask about the rising and declining fortunes of their elected officials.

Full Disclosure: I am the Online Organizer and Outreach Coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation

Ask lawmakers about the issues you care about on NPR

Cross posted from Sunlight Foundation

If you had a microphone and a media pass at the U.S. Capitol, what would you ask your lawmaker? What issues matter most to you during this election? The economy? Healthcare? Immigration, global warming, Iraq? Now’s your chance to make your voice heard in the corridors of power and on 200+ public radio stations across the U.S.

Using Sunlight grantee Capitol News Connection’s new Ask Your Lawmaker site and widget, you can ask powerful lawmakers on the air about the issues that will define this election. Plus, how lawmakers, as “super delegates” could end up picking the candidates at the conventions: how will they decide?

Capitol News Connection, the award-winning congressional news service that brings politics ‘home’ to almost 2 million public radio listeners nationwide, will compile the best – and most popular questions – submitted through the Ask Your Lawmaker widget and site. Citizens with the best questions will be chosen to ask them on the air. Listeners can also call them the CNC team at 202/546-8654.

All questions must be submitted by COB Monday, February 11. The Ask Your Lawmaker shows will air on over 200 NPR affiliates next Tuesday (2/12) and Wednesday (2/13).

PS: If you haven’t already, be sure to download CNC’s Ask Your Lawmaker widget and use it on your site!

I am the Outreach Coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation

Congressional Transparency on a Map

Cross posted from Sunlight Foundation

“We can never understand [a House member’s] Washington activity without also understating his perception of his various constituencies and the home style he uses to cultivate their support…” states Richard Fenno in Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. Fenno understands that the work of members of Congress is more than committee meetings and votes but is also people they meet with from the district. The work in the district builds trust constituents need to send them to Washington and to accept the decisions they make there. Fenno’s makes the point that the work of lawmakers done in the district is not an exhibition but the yang to Washington’s Ying.

This trust that lawmakers create in the district extends to who they meet with in Washington. The Punch Clock motto has always been “Members of Congress work for us, and we should know what they do every day.” Fenno made this point a different way, “Trust is, however, a fragile relationship. It is not an overnight or one-time thing. It is hard to win; and it must be constantly renewed and rewon. ”

In this spirit, Sunlight has decided to help out by creating a trust-building tool. This tool, the Punch Clock Map, is a Google map mashup with corresponding RSS feeds that lets citizens see for themselves just how elected officials spend their time and how they serve their district’s needs.

Punch Clock Map provides a visual representation of the meetings detailed by the eight members of Congress who post their daily schedules online. Currently, that includes: Sen. Max Baucus,? Rep. Kathy Castor,? Rep. John Doolittle,? Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand,? Sen. Bill Nelson,? Rep. Denny Rehberg,? Rep. Jan Schakowsky? and Sen. Jon Tester.? (As Rep. Alcee Hastings? posts an abridged weekly schedule, his is not included.)

To let citizens monitor how their elected officials address their district’s needs, the maps mark the home-base location of the organization or individual who met with the lawmaker, not where the meeting occurred. If the lawmaker’s schedule provides a location, organization or individual (who can be easily identified), those meetings are plotted on the map. (The map does not include internal business meetings, committee hearings, meetings with constituents without easily identifiable addresses or location and meetings with other current members of Congress.)

The Punch Clock Map is an extension of the Punch Clock Campaign, an initiative the Sunlight Foundation began in 2006, which asked all candidates for congressional office – challengers and incumbents – to promise, if elected, to post their daily schedules on the Internet. Inspired by the 60 percent of Americans who ‘punch a clock’ to account for their time at work, Sunlight asked why members of Congress should not also account for their time to their employers: the citizens they represent.

Building trust is an essential part of the representative – constituent relationship. Posting a schedule helps maintain the trust that lawmakers go through such efforts to maintain and it also helps instill trust in the constituents who are always looking for ways to not trust their lawmakers.

Disclaimer: I am the outreach coordinator for the Sunlight Foundation