Dial for 223
Our friends at the Sunlight Foundation have launched a new campaign to get Senators to on record in support of a campaign finance disclosure bill before they head home for the August recess. Want to give your Senator a call? Click here - Sunlight makes it easy.The bill, S.223, would require Senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically, as the House already does. A small but irritating group of Senators, mostly Republicans, are opposed to the bill and have tried a number of obstruction tactics to stop the bill, and keep voters and watchdog groups from having quicker and more efficient access to information about where their elected officials were getting their campaign cash. The latest trick is an amendment that would require any organizations who lodge a complaint about a Senator's finance reports to disclose their donor list -- an amendment that would never pass, and never survive even the most gentle of Constitutional challenges. All it's doing is holding up the bill. So the Sunlight Foundation is going to work tracking down the position of every single Senator on the bill and the amendment and to let the Senate know that their constituents care about this issue. Click here to find information on who to call in your Senator's office to ask about this, and what to say. You can report what you found out right away on the site.