Congress Inches Towards Joining the Information Age

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Guest Blogger: Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation

For the past seven years Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced a bill requiring Senators to file their reports of campaign contributions in an electronic format. Currently Senators file these reports on paper with the Secretary of the Senate who then transmits the reports to the Federal Election Commission where the reports are retyped back into computers. The process costs about $250,000 a year and means that a lot of campaign contributions to Senators are not available for public review prior to a November election. This year, Sen. Feingold’s bill, S. 223, finally made it out of committee.

On March 28, 2007, the Rules and Administration Committee passed the bill in a 10-0 vote after a potentially controversial amendment was dropped at the last second. During the first hearing on the bill Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) pleaded to the committee members that they pass the bill without any amendments added. Ranking Member Bob Bennett (R-Utah), however, stated his desire to introduce an amendment that he stated would be non-controversial. Bennett’s amendment wound up being the exact opposite.

Bennett proposed adding an amendment that would repeal the ban on candidate and parties from coordinating with each other during elections. This is a highly controversial measure that would turn S. 223 from a bill that would likely pass by unanimous consent to a bill that would likely not even get a vote.

By the mark-up on March 28th, Feinstein and Bennett reached an agreement. Bennett dropped the controversial amendment and cosponsored the bill while Feinstein promised to hold a hearing on Bennett amendment as a stand alone bill. Feingold’s bill was reported out of committee, ending its seven year stay. The bill is now on the Senate calendar and is likely to be passed by unanimous consent when it is brought to the floor.