Watchdog Blog

Manufacturers Lose Bid to Evade New Lobbying Law

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) lost round one of their attempt to overturn the part of last year's landmark lobbying reform law which requires it to reveal the businesses funding the goliath lobbying organization.  Public Citizen, the Campaign Legal Center, and Democracy 21 filed an amicus brief [pdf] explaining how the disclosure requirement is constitutional, and should be kept intact.  U.S. District Judge Kollar-Kotelly agreed with us.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly dismissed NAM’s constitutional challenge, stating in her opinion:

The Court has conducted a searching review of the NAM’s opening brief, the Opposition filed by Defendant Taylor and the Opposition filed by the Legislative Defendants, the two amici briefs filed in this case by Citizens for Reform and Ethics in Washington (''CREW'') and Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, and Public Citizen (jointly the ''CLC Amici''), and the NAM’s Reply brief, as well as the relevant statutes and case law.

Time for Devil in the Details to Go Digital

These days almost everything can be done electronically: paying bills, buying music, watching movies . . . the IRS even allows tax returns to be submitted online.

But not in the Senate. There, they prefer to waste taxpayer dollars on paper and keep voters in the dark about campaign dollars.

The current system for senators to submit campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission is a maze of back-and-forth between agencies that requires printing and re-typing the same information repeatedly.  The result is an annual $250,000.00 bill to taxpayers and the delayed release of information to the public.

The Next President on Open Government

We’re all fed up with lengths to which the Bush Administration has gone to hide its business from public scrutiny.  But how open will our next president be?  Our coalition, the Sunshine Week alliance, asked all the presidential candidates to complete a survey in last October about their positions on open government and freedom of information issues. 

Of the remaining three candidates, only Sen. Hillary Clinton responded (read her answers here [pdf]).  To get the other candidates’ positions, a team of researchers poured over articles, speeches and debate transcripts, and any other records they could find.

Below are brief overviews -- read the complete findings here.

How to End Government Secrecy

Yesterday was the much-anticipated webcast on government secrecy and the newest online resources available for uncovering information (watch the archived event here).

Remember the checks and balances and our freedoms of speech and press?  They were written into the Constitution and Bill of Rights to ensure we had the tools to hold government accountable.

So, what happened?  How do you explain how the Bush Administration has gotten away with so much unnecessary secrecy over the past seven years?

Joan Claybrook Speaks Out on Secrecy

What are the effects of so much unnecessary secrecy in our government?  Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen, explains why it is a threat to democracy and what Congress needs to do about it:

An open and accountable government is a cornerstone of our democracy. As Americans, it is our right and our duty to know how government operates; transparency is one of the great checks we have against corruption and tyranny. Yet, during the past seven years, President Bush has gone to extremes to keep the workings of his administration in the shadows, away from public scrutiny.

Get Your Sunglasses - It's Sunshine Week

Today marks the beginning of Sunshine Week 2008!

It's long been painfully clear that the Bush Administration does not believe in an open democratic government.  It has used one ruse after another to keep information from the public -- from “national security” to “executive privilege” to plain old stonewalling.  That's why this Sunshine Week we are joining print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and individuals interested in the public's right to know, to call on the federal government to end its campaign of secrecy.

Some events you should check out include:

• Tomorrow, March 18, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley will address Freedom of Information and other open government issues during a Sunshine Week dinner event at The National Press Club.  Learn more.
• This Wednesday, March 19, OpenTheGovernment.org, Public Citizen and others sponsor a free webcast from 1:00 to 2:30 pm EDT on excessive government secrecy. You can register to watch it here, or if you have a Facebook account, click here.
• On Thursday, March 20, the Sunlight Foundation and Omidyar Network are hosting a webcast of Prof. Lawrence Lessig, who will introduce a plan called "Change Congress," designed to increase congressional transparency.

Check out other events happening in D.C. and states across the country.

Also, be sure to urge you members of Congress to support our agenda for a more open, transparent government.

Bush, Sunshine and Apple Pie

What does it mean to have an open government?  As a catch phrase, it is appealing, like apple pie.  It seems especially American and downright fundamental: “a government by and for the people.”  It suggests that we are in power, and that through transparency we can avoid tyranny and oppression.

In truth, it is an ideal – one for which we are still reaching.  The Constitution, and the First Amendment in particular, provides the principles, but it has taken the efforts of many over two centuries to create a legal and practical framework for some transparency in government.  We might prefer that our elected officials spend their time pondering how to make the government more accountable to the people (instead of fundraising), but unfortunately, this is rarely the case.  Often we have gained more access through legislation, such as the Freedom of Information Act, enacted in response to some crisis of trust in our public officials.

Now is such a time.

Why is Sessions Keeping Bush's Secrets?

Some presidents just have more to hide than others. 

We have been working to expose the secrets of the current administration, but now another senator is standing in the way.  Senator Jeff Sessions is the latest to block a bill that would return the presidential records to the American people.   

Bush's Executive Order 13233 was a direct attack on the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a law passed in the wake of Watergate that makes presidential records the property of the American people.  A president should not be allowed to legislate and lock away his records with a stroke of a pen.

But this is not just about Bush.  It's about the records of ALL presidents.

The bipartisan bill to undo the Bush order has passed the House by a veto-proof margin and is close to becoming a law, but Senator Sessions is still standing in between the people and their right to know. 

What you can do: Call Senator Sessions' office and ask why he is blocking S. 886 and tell him to stop obstructing a vote.

Our Right to Know? Over Whose Dead Body?

Bush recently told Israeli reporters: “I'll be dead before the true history of the Bush administration is written.” 

Over his dead body?  Perhaps he meant that his "good works" would be told later, but as long as we let him keep his iron grip on presidential records, it could be several generations of Bushes before we know much of anything.

In 2001, Bush signed Executive Order 13233 to allow current and previous presidents to withhold documents and records without explanation INDEFINITELY.  What’s more, the order extends the presidents’ authority to control the records under to presidential family members, and vice presidents.

This unprecedented expansion of executive power flouts FOIA, precedent, and the principles of the Constitution.  The order, drafted by former Attorney General and close Bush friend Alberto Gonzales, eviscerates the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act, which made presidential records the property of the government, and then the public.  Our right to know should not be subject to the whims of the executive.

Legislation to repeal the order passed the House, but has been repeatedly blocked in the Senate.  First Senator Bunning was named as the holder. After feeling some pressure, Sen. Bunning removed his hold, and then friends of ours in the Senate attempted again to bring the bill up for a vote just before the holiday break.  It didn’t happen because, we are told, there is another objection from another unknown senator – no doubt carrying more water for the President. 

Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, the nation is consumed by one of the more thrilling primary elections in memory.  But where do the presidential candidates stand on the Presidential Records Act and presidential secrecy?  Senator Clinton recently was accused, perhaps unfairly, of preventing public access to Clinton Administration records.  Still, Senator Clinton is conspicuously not a cosponsor of the bill that would revoke the Bush Executive Order, the Presidential Records Act Amendments.

Why not? 

It’s been nearly two months since Philipe Reines, a spokesman for Clinton's Senate office, told the Tribune that "Senator Clinton believes that President Bush's 2001 Executive Order was wholly unnecessary and is inconsistent with the spirit of the Presidential Records Act, and therefore supports legislative efforts to reverse that order."

We’re still waiting for Clinton, and most of the other presidential candidates, to demonstrate that they believe the records belong to the people, not the President.  So far, only Senator Obama has put his name on the bill.

So while the world is enthralled with the presidential horse race, presidential records are hidden away and transparency transgressed again and again.  We can’t forget that much of our government remains in the hands of a few, until we take it back – again and again.

Clinton should back open-records bill

by Mike Dorning, Chicago Tribune

Democrats are fond of condemning President Bush for promoting a "culture of secrecy" in the federal government. And high on the list of criticism is an executive order he issued shortly after taking office that allows former and current presidents to indefinitely hold up the release of presidential papers from past administrations.

Hillary Clinton now finds herself in the middle of a controversy over the slow pace of her husband's presidential library in releasing White House papers that might shed light on the former first lady's role in his administration. Candidate Clinton has responded with explanations, examined in a Tribune article earlier this week, that the delays are caused by current archives laws and assurances that she and her husband are committed to transparency in their official papers.

But Public Citizen, a liberal-leaning open-government group founded by Ralph Nader, is now challenging Clinton on the point, arguing that if she were serious about opening up government she would throw her considerable political weight behind legislative efforts to overturn Bush's executive order on presidential libraries.

"If Sen. Clinton is really serious about transparency in the executive branch, she could demonstrate her interest in openness now by signing on to the bill to repeal the Bush Executive Order that is allowing the records to be kept out of the public domain. We hope Clinton and all of the presidential candidates will take a stand on presidential secrecy by supporting the bill," said Angela Canterbury, field and outreach director for Public Citizen's Congress Watch Division.

Gagging the Government on Auto Safety

Don’t Quote NHTSA on That…What’s happening at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)? Depending upon whom you ask you might get no answer at all—or at least no answer for use on the record. NHTSA seems to have pulled the proverbial shade on any kind of transparent, open door communication policy between the press and its staff, leaving crucially important safety information unavailable for on-the-record publication and consumers in the dark about agency dealings.

Perhaps an example is in order.  Given a situation like the I-35 bridge collapse catastrophe, if a reporter seeks on-the-record information, two options apparently exist: contact the office of NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason (trained in law, not engineering), or pursue the questionably ambiguous process of obtaining special permission to speak on the record with a real expert, after what can only presumably be a nip/tuck job by higher-ups of all the expert’s statements. Forget contacting the now inappropriately titled communication staff—the policy applies to them, too. The other “choice” involves use of information without official attribution; a process frowned upon by responsible publications around the country.

Enough is Enough – Kyl Should Stop Blocking OPEN Government Act

Today, Public Citizen sent a letter to Senator Jon Kyl (R.-Ariz.), asking him to allow an important bill to increase access to government information to come to a vote in the Senate.

We’re not the only ones asking for a break. Last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.), the Democratic whip, sought unanimous consent to bring up the OPEN Government Act again, which would critically improve the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The GOP again blocked consideration of the bill for the now-unmasked “Senator Anonymous ” – Senator Kyl (R.-Ariz.). At yesterday’s opening of the Senate session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), asked for an end to objections over bringing the uncontroversial, bipartisan bill to the floor. Kyl did not back down.   

It’s time for Senator Kyl to stop obstructing a vote for FOIA and allow the OPEN Government Act to go to the floor. The bill would strengthen the law that provides access to government documents for the press and citizens. Senator Kyl is quibbling over a few parts of the bill, and Senators Leahy (D.-Vt.) and Cornyn (R.-Tx.) have tried to accommodate his concerns.

But there is a limit to how much compromise is deserved here. 

The current bill encourages the timely settlement of cases where the government lacks a reasonable basis to withhold information. The incentive it provides would strengthen FOIA, decrease the cost of litigation and benefit taxpayers. People of modest means should not be penalized when it comes to using FOIA.  In fact, the majority of FOIA requesters are individuals and businesses – taxpayers that deserve real and timely information about the actions of their government.

Senator Kyl should step aside now, and allow the Senate to vote on the OPEN Government Act.      

Gotcha! Senator Secret is Senator Kyl

Senator Kyl finally confirmed that he is the senator with the secret hold on the OPEN Government Act.  We first blogged about the ironic secret hold on this transparency bill last week.  Since then, our activists and others like the Chamber of Commerce have been sending letters and flooding the Senate with calls to smoke out the senator in hiding.

Kyl (R AZ) finally buckled under the pressure yesterday, admitting he placed the secret hold because of Department of Justice concerns.  We have plenty of DOJ concerns ourselves.  It’s clear DOJ under Attorney General Gonzales is opposed to any transparency and accountability. 

Shame on DOJ, shame on Senator Kyl.

Isn’t It Ironic? OPEN Government Held Hostage by Secret Hold

It’s an almost unbelievable irony that a bill called the OPEN Government Act has been sequestered by another secret hold. 

The bill in question is a bipartisan effort to update the seminal Freedom of Information Act to make the government more open and accountable.  It recently overwhelmingly passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The House version of the bill, "Freedom of Information Act of 2007," passed on March 15 by 308 to 117.  More than one hundred organizations and thousands of citizens have expressed support for the bills.

Yet, when Senators Leahy and Cornyn tried to bring the bill to a vote on the floor last Thursday, the vote was blocked by “Senator Anonymous.”  Some Republican senator called the Minority Leader’s office and objected to a vote on the bill, but asked for anonymity and did not publicly state the reason for the hold.

This is not the first time the secret hold has been used to thwart transparency.  In fact, this tactic for lampooning openness in government seems to be the new darling of the old school back-room deal makers. 

The secret hold is used to block a bill from coming to the floor for a vote.  It is typical for a non-controversial bill – like the OPEN Government Act – to be brought to the floor by unanimous consent.  However, any senator can call their party leader and ask that the bill be held – anonymously and with absolutely no transparency.  That will change if the Senate lobbying and ethics bill passed in January ever becomes law.

Until then, we have only grassroots pressure to ferret out the secret holder.

It’s time to expose the cowardly senator who mocks us by hiding behind an anachronistic power play and blocking real reform.  Everyone with a Republican senator should call or email to ask: Did you place the secret hold on the OPEN Government Act?

Any senator with a spine would speak up now.

Hit comments below this post or email us and tell us what you learn in your calls.

Justice Department Refuses to Release Documents

Even with all the negative attention it’s received over the U.S. attorney firings, the Justice Department still has the nerve to refuse to release papers related to the scandal.

According to The Washington Post, the Justice Department has released almost 6,000 pages of documents relevant to the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys. But it refuses to release 171 documents to Congress.

The withheld papers include e-mails that discuss media strategies, drafts of letters to Capitol Hill, memos and other documents, according to the Post.

Can’t imagine that Congress is going to like this …

You Never Know What’s Secret in the Bush Administration

Intelligence officials have spent months figuring out just how many contractors work for intelligence agencies, including the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and others, according to The New York Times.

Apparently, there’s some concern about how reliant the intelligence agencies have become on private contractors. The Times article noted that the intelligence agencies have increased their use of contractors during the Bush administration’s tenure.

But the question remains: How many contractors do work for intelligence agencies?

We don’t know. The government won’t tell us, because the number of contractors is classified.

Apparently, knowing the number of contractors – not government employees, mind you – will somehow give the bad guys a leg up.

“It reveals how confused the government is about what is really sensitive and what is not,” said Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “What would Osama bin Laden do with the fraction of intelligence workers who are contractors? Absolutely nothing.”

Lift the “Secret Hold” on Transparency Bill

A block, a hold, an objection . . . there has been debate over what to call it, but the fact is that an anonymous Republican senator has put the brakes on S. 223 -- a bill to mandate that the Senate file its campaign finance reports electronically; making them more readily available for public view. 

There is nothing controversial about this bill and it has strong bipartisan support.  The House and the White House already have the same reporting requirements.  In fact, most senators maintain campaign finance records electronically, but are required to hand over paper copies nonetheless.  Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) explains the shenanigans:

The Senate campaign filing system in place today requires paper copies of disclosure reports to be filed with the Senate Office of Public Records, which scans them to make a digital copy and sends the copy to the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) on a dedicated communications line.  The FEC then prints the report and sends it to a vendor in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where the information is keyed in by hand and then transferred back to the FEC database – at cost of approximately $250,000 annually to taxpayers.

It is easy to understand why Senators Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) sought unanimous consent to bring the bill to the floor.  One can only assume that any senator who puts an anonymous hold on this bill has something to hide. 

Curious?  Help find the senator by calling yours and reporting it here.

Funny Money Hits the Hill

If members of Congress think that the fight to clean up Washington ended on Nov. 7, they are sorely mistaken.

Yet there are still plenty of politicians here who DO NOT want to change a thing.  Others who ran on cleaning up Washington still have not delivered.  It's easy for politicians to get a little too comfortable with the way things work in DC…

The truth is you gotta keep on bugging them.

Public Citizen and other reform groups have been prodding Congress to put their lobbying and ethics reform bill back on the front burner.   We don’t want the political momentum for bold reform to lose steam and are asking folks to pull out all the stops to keep it going until it gets passed.

That is why we are delivering "funny money" lobbyist cash to reps. on behalf of their constituents.  Our activists are demanding to know who how much bundled campaign contributions are coming from lobbyists and what for-profit grassroots lobbying firms are spending big bucks to influence Congress on controversial legislation.

We figured -- money talks in Washington.  Take a second to send your own and say it's time for real change, and not chump change.

The Mystery of the Missing White House E-mails

To enable White House officials to conduct political business without getting into trouble for doing it with government equipment, the Republican National Committee (RNC) gave the officials RNC e-mail accounts several years ago. Those receiving the accounts included top White House advisor Karl Rove, according to news reports (Check out this Reuters report and this column in The Washington Post).

Trouble is, Rove apparently conducted some government business with his RNC account - a great way to keep that government business hidden.

Now, some of those official e-mails may erroneously have been deleted, the White House says. And some of Rove's e-mails may have been related to the controversial firing of U.S. prosecutors.

Cover up? Or just an honest mistake? Stay tuned. Well almost certainly hear more about this one.

Easter Recess... And Rotten Eggs

The Senate is out for Easter recess now.  Which means the White House might be planning to hide some rotten eggs — by giving out recess appointments that would give a lot of power to some unacceptable special interests.

Rotten Egg #1: Susan Dudley

One of them might be Susan Dudley.  You might remember Dudley: she spent her career arguing that if we truly valued protections like air bags or privacy rights, then corporations would already be giving them to us… so there’s no need for any regulation to protect us.

Bush nominated her to an office where she would have power to weaken and eliminate all those pesky regulations, like air bags and privacy rights, which Dudley thinks we don’t really need.

Your calls and letters to the Senate last year were successful:  the Susan Dudley nomination wasn’t even allowed to leave the committee.  And the Republican Senator who chaired that committee last year actually told the press that the president would be within his rights to send the nomination back in 2007… but it would just be a waste of time.

So did Bush learn his lesson?  Nope.  Bush is at it again in 2007 – nominating, once again, Susan Dudley to become the regulatory czar.  But even that wasn’t enough:  while the Senate is looking again at her nomination, Bush decided to put her in power through the backdoor, by making her a “senior advisor,” so that she can go ahead and do the job that the Senate decided last year she shouldn’t be allowed to do.

Remind the Senate that Dudley is unfit to have such enormous power to ruin your health and safety, and tell the White House not to use the Easter recess to give her a recess appointment.

Rotten Egg #2:  Michael Baroody

President Bush would be hard-pressed to find a more inappropriate nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC), the government agency charged with protecting consumers from dangerous products, than Michael Baroody.  Why?  Because Baroody has spent the past decade lobbying to undermine consumers’ rights.

As the head of advocacy efforts for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Baroody has spearheaded campaigns at both the federal and state levels to limit the ability of regulatory agencies like CPSC to protect us, and to bar consumers who have been injured from being able to go to court and demand justice.

NAM advocacy efforts include a wide-ranging strategy to influence elections. In conjunction with the Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) and other groups, NAM helps run the “Prosperity Project,” an effort to elect pro-business candidates.  2004 was a busy time for NAM and its “Prosperity Project” – which NAM claimed was a neutral voter education effort, although University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs thought otherwise:  “This is not nonpartisan, evenhanded campaign material,” he said, about literature distributed by Prosperity Project companies and associations.  “It’s material that’s subtly but clearly promoting one candidate at the expense of another.” While Baroody told the National Review that NAM did not endorse candidates, Baroody slammed 2004 Democratic nominees John Kerry and John Edwards as being “virtually in a league by themselves,” in terms of their credibility gap with manufacturers.

The White House has likely calculated that Baroody won’t pass the smell test in the Senate.  Tell the White House that a recess appointment of Baroody stinks.

New Man on the Hill Shows All

The AP reports, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has fulfilled a unique campaign promise.  At end of each day, his office posts a schedule of what he did and with whom he met.

Constituents can see how much time he is in the gym or who is joining him for lunch.  For instance, at 2:15pm on January 30, 2007, he met with with Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post for an interview.

Such transparency is a remarkable step forward for government accountability and helps put pressure on other senators to open up about how they spend their time.  They are, after all, our public servants and unless they have something to hide, they ought to follow his lead.   

Wondering why your senator doesn't do the same?  Why not ask?

Click here to find your Senators' phone number, or call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Let us know what you hear by commenting to this blog below.