There they go again. An anonymous senator has placed a hold on a proposal sponsored by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, to put senate campaign contribution reports online as soon as they are submitted each quarter.
The secret hold became known yesterday when Feinstein tried to get a Senate vote on the measure. Earlier this year, the Senate approved a rule ending secret holds, but that measure remains in legislative limbo because a Senate-House conference committee is needed.
A senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, who has previously opposed similar bills, told me earlier this year that his boss would no longer seek to block the measure, so he presumably is not be the senator with the secret hold.
So who is it?
Under current procedures, the quarterly reports listing campaign donors are prepared electronically by senators’ staffs, but are then only made available to the public in paper form. In addition, it is not unusual for several months to elapse before the paper reports are made available. That usually means voters don’t know who has contributed to a senator seeking re-election until long after the votes have been counted.
Regular readers will recall that a similar situation developed last year when Sen. Ted Stevens, R-AK, and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, put secret holds on the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. That bill required the government to establish a google-like searchable database on the internet of most federal spending.
But instead of killing Coburn-Obama, the secret holds sparked a revolt in the Blogosphere. A coalition of bloggers across the political spectrum encouraged readers to call their senators and ask if they were the one putting the hold on Coburn-Obama. Within a few days, first Stevens and then Byrd were exposed. Not long afterward, Congress approved the measure and PResident Bush signed it into law.
One of the key players in the coalition that saved Coburn-Obama from legislative oblivion is springing back into action today in an effort to unmarks the senator who put the secret hold on Feinstein-Feingold. The Sunlight Foundation has posted the names of all 100 senators and readers are encouraged to again call their senators and ask them if they are the secret holder.
No matter what kind of response, or non-response, you receive, go to the Sunlight web site and post it. As senators are eliminated as candidates for being the holder, their names will be taken off the list of potential offenders.As of 3:30 pm today, 21 senators have declared that they aren’t behind the secret hold.
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