[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 25, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2484-S2485]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. FEINGOLD (for himself, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Schumer, Mr. 
        Bennett, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. McCain, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Alexander, 
        Mr. Reid, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Isakson, Mr. Dodd, Mr. 
        Grassley, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Levin, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Akaka, Mr. 
        Harkin, Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mr. Reed, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. 
        Bingaman, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Cardin):
  S. 482. A bill to require Senate candidates to file designations, 
statements, and reports in electronic form; read the first time.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I will once again introduce with 
the senior Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, the Senate Campaign 
Disclosure Parity Act, a bill to require that Senate candidates file 
their campaign finance disclosure reports electronically and that those 
reports be promptly made available to the public. This step is long 
overdue; indeed I first introduced this bill in 2003. I hope that the 
Senate will act quickly on this legislation this year.
  A series of reports by the Campaign Finance Institute has highlighted 
the anomaly in the election laws that makes it nearly impossible for 
the public to get access to Senate campaign finance reports while most 
other reports are available on the Internet within 24 hours of their 
filing with the Federal Election Commission, FEC. The Campaign Finance 
Institute asks a rhetorical question: ``What makes the Senate so 
special that it exempts itself from a key requirement of campaign 
finance disclosure that applies to everyone else, including candidates 
for the House of Representatives and Political Action Committees?''
  The answer, of course, is nothing. The U.S. Senate is special in many 
ways. I am proud to serve here. But there is no excuse for keeping our 
campaign finance information inaccessible to the public when the 
information filed by House candidates or others is readily available.
  My bill amends the section of the election laws dealing with 
electronic filing to require reports filed with the Secretary of the 
Senate to be filed electronically and forwarded to the FEC within 24 
hours. The FEC is required to make available on the Internet within 24 
hours any filing it receives electronically. So if this bill is 
enacted, electronic versions of Senate reports should be available to 
the public within 48 hours of their filing. That will be a vast 
improvement over the current situation, which, according to the 
Campaign Finance Institute, requires journalists and interested members 
of the public to review computer images of paper-filed copies of 
reports, and involves a completely wasteful expenditure of hundreds of 
thousands of dollars to re-enter information into databases that almost 
every campaign has available in electronic format.
  The current filing system also means that the detailed coding that 
the FEC does, which allows for more sophisticated searches and 
analysis, is completed over a week later for Senate reports than for 
House reports. This means that the final disclosure reports covering 
the first two weeks of October are often not susceptible to detailed 
scrutiny before the election. According to the Campaign Finance 
Institute, in the 2006 election, ``[v]oters in six of the hottest 
Senate races were out of luck the week before the November 7 election 
if they did Web searches for information on general election 
contributions since June 30. . . . In all ten of the most closely 
followed Senate races voters were unable to search through any 
candidate reports for information on pre-general election (October 1-
18) donations.'' And a September 18, 2006, column by Jeffery H. 
Birnbaum in the Washington Post noted that ``When the polls opened in 
November 2004, voters were in the dark about $53 million in individual 
Senate contributions of $200 or more dating all the way back to July. . 
. .''
  Because the Senate failed to pass this bill last Congress, even 
though we had 48 bipartisan cosponsors and no known opposition, and 
even though the Senate Rules Committee reported the bill by voice vote, 
the same problem existed for Senate elections in the 2008 cycle. In 
addition, because of the expense, when the FEC puts information from 
the paper filings in its electronic database, it only enters 
contributions, not expenditures. So anyone interested in how a Senate 
campaign is spending its money has to consult the paper forms.
  As Roll Call said in its recent editorial in favor of the bill, 
``[i]t's time for this nonsense to come to an end.'' It is time for the 
Senate to at long last relinquish its backward attitude toward campaign 
finance disclosure. I urge the enactment of this simple bill that will 
make our reports subject to the same prompt, public scrutiny as those 
filed by PACs, House and Presidential candidates, and even 527 
organizations. I close with another question from the Campaign Finance 
Institute: ``Isn't it time that the Senate join the 21st century and 
allow itself to vote on a simple legislative fix that could 
significantly improve our democracy?'' This Congress, let us finally 
answer that question in the affirmative.
  I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and the Roll Call 
editorial be printed in the Record.

                    [From Roll Call, Feb. 11, 2009]

                               Outrageous

       In this year when ``transparency'' is all the rage, it 
     would be appropriate for the Senate--at long last--to join 
     the House and every federal political committee in filing 
     campaign finance reports electronically.
       Fundraising and spending reports for the end of 2008 were 
     due on Jan. 31. Reports for House Members and candidates and 
     the Republican and Democratic parties and their campaign 
     committees all were instantly available to the media, 
     watchdog groups and the public on the Federal Election 
     Commission's Web site.
       But Senate reports take weeks from the filing deadline to 
     make it into the public realm. And when they are made 
     available, it's at the conclusion of a circuitous process

[[Page S2485]]

     that costs taxpayers an estimated $250,000 a year that could 
     be far better spent elsewhere--almost anywhere else--or 
     simply used to narrow the federal deficit.
       Moreover, because of the expense, the FEC does not 
     electronically post Senate campaign expenditures, only 
     contributions--a gap that Steve Weissman of the Campaign 
     Finance Institute correctly calls ``outrageous.''
       Senators use FEC-approved software to compile their 
     reports, but then they snail-mail paper copies to the office 
     of the Secretary of the Senate, which then scans some 27,000 
     pages and sends them electronically to the FEC.
       They can be then combed through page by page on the FEC Web 
     site, but not digitally manipulated or matched. The FEC hires 
     a contractor to key the data into digital form. Only then, a 
     month or more after the filing deadline, can the data be 
     searched and connections made, if any, between money 
     collected and votes or positions Senators or their opponents 
     have taken.
       But it still takes page-by-page searching to review 
     candidates' spending--to determine, for instance, if 
     candidates' relatives are on the campaign payroll.
       All this ridiculous complexity is necessary because in 2000 
     the Senate exempted itself from an electronic filing 
     requirement written into the FEC's appropriation. Legislation 
     to correct the situation has been regularly introduced by 
     Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), and it's regularly had dozens of 
     co-sponsors.
       But it's never passed. Change was resisted at first by Sen. 
     Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who wanted to maintain a fusty Senate 
     ``prerogative,'' and then by various Republican Senators who 
     wanted to attach amendments that amounted to ``poison 
     pills.''
       Last year, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee 
     approved the bill for floor action, but it was blocked by 
     Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) who sought to add a provision 
     requiring disclosure of the donors to any organization filing 
     ethics complaints against a Senator. The bill never was voted 
     on.
       It's time for this nonsense to come to an end. Feingold is 
     planning to re-introduce the measure soon. It ought to be 
     processed promptly by the Rules Committee, now chaired by 
     Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and pushed to the floor for 
     passage as early in the year as possible so if it's subject 
     to more shenanigans, they can be exposed and resolved.
                                 ______