In late January, first-term Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) called on the Interior Department to allow a regulated wolf hunt in Montana. A few days later, he urged Taco Bell to use Montana beef in its restaurants.

In between, Tester introduced S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. The measure would require senators and U.S. Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission — electronically.

“By law, the public has a right to know who’s funding the political campaigns of their leaders,” Tester said in a press release at the time of the bill’s introduction. “But it’s not real transparency when folks have to wait up to a month to get that information.”

Senate campaign committees remain the only federal political committees not required to file their financial disclosure reports electronically with the FEC. This means that it often take weeks, and sometimes months, to get detailed information about who is funding these politicians’ war chests.

All the while, the government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to enter the Senate’s paper records into digital databases. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of pages of paper are wasted.

“The Senate exemption is indefensible,” Thomas Mann, a campaign finance expert at the Brookings Institute said in testimony before the Senate in 2007. “It hampers the ability of the public to get timely access to Senate campaign finance information. It is woefully inefficient, adding substantial unnecessary costs.”

Long-time campaign finance reform advocate Russ Feingold, who was ousted from his U.S. Senate seat in November, had championed similar legislation for years. Last year, Feingold’s bill, which had bipartisan support, was rolled into the DISCLOSE Act — a bill designed to shed more light on the funders of political advertisements.

All 59 members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus supported the DISCLOSE Act. But Republicans, even those who backed the provision requiring Senate committees to file electronically, twice voted unanimously to oppose it.

Transparency advocates continue to push for a slimmed down version of the DISCLOSE Act, but electronic filing for senators could be one of the things left on the cutting room floor.

“The Senate electronic filing provision will not likely be included in a slimmed down version of the DISCLOSE Act,” Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer rights organization Public Citizen, told OpenSecrets Blog. “The sole purpose of the new DISCLOSE Act is to achieve transparency of the flow of outside money into elections.”



BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR MAKING THE TECHNOLOGICAL LEAP FORWARD

After it was introduced, Tester’s bill was referred to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), is a strong supporter of the measure.

“This is a very important bill,” Jason Abel, the chief counsel of the Senate Rules Committee, told OpenSecrets Blog. “We’re optimistic that there is a path forward for this legislation. We’re hopeful that we can move this.”

Tester’s bill continues to enjoy bipartisan support as a stand-alone idea.

To date, the legislation has been co-sponsored by 19 other senators, including Schumer and Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

The FEC, too, supports the change.

For years, the commission has included the electronic filing of Senate campaign reports among its legislative recommendations. It reiterated that recommendation on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the Sunlight Foundation is urging senators to make the technological leap forward, with or without an immediate change in the law.

“We are encouraging all senators to voluntarily electronically file their campaign finance reports,” Lisa Rosenberg, a lobbyist for the Sunlight Foundation, told OpenSecrets Blog. “If you get a critical mass doing it, you show it can be done.”

When senators do file their campaign finance documents electronically, the FEC requires that they submit paper copies as well. The paper copies are the official records that are audited. But the FEC does make the “unofficial” electronic filings available on their website in a timely fashion.

A vast majority of senators are on Twitter and Facebook, instantaneously communicating with their constituents about issues. But very few display the same gusto about quickly showing the public who is funding their campaigns.

While some senators do already voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically, they are a select minority: just seven sitting senators chose to file their reports electronically in January, when the most recent round of campaign finance reports were due to the FEC.

Those transparency-loving seven were Cochran and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas).

A ‘NO BRAINER’ THAT FACES LEGISLATIVE OBSTACLES

Some in the upper chamber of Congress have not been eager to take a jump into the internet era.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for instance, has been a vocal opponent of campaign finance regulations over the years, and members of his caucus have used secret holds and other procedures to thwart the bill’s progress.

During the 110th Congress, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) threatened to attach an amendment to the electronic filing bill that would require any organization that files an ethics complaint with the Senate to disclosure their donors.

Government transparency advocates, including Public Citizen, the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics, argued that Roberts’ controversial “poison pill” amendment should be voted down and considered separately from the electronic filing bill.

Holman, the lobbyist for Public Citizen says Tester’s bill is a “no brainer.”

His organizations and others plan hope to successfully navigate the less than friendly terrain.

“The session has just begun,” Holman said. “This is something that we will pick up again, and inevitably it will face McConnell’s obstacle course.”

Rosenberg, the lobbyist for the Sunlight Foundation, told OpenSecrets Blog that she, like Holman, expects strong opposition again from some Republicans this time around.

“They’ve said if it comes up in committee, they’re going to make a Christmas tree out of it and hang all sorts of amendments on it,” Rosenberg said. “They don’t want it to move at all.”

The press offices of Roberts and McConnell did not immediately respond to inquiries by OpenSecrets Blog seeking comment for this story.



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