As the debate over health care reform legislation has heated up over the spring and summer months, the Senate Finance Committee has found itself at the center of the debate. Leading this debate has been the duo of Max Baucus, committee chair, and Chuck Grassley, committee ranking member. According to...

Six senators called for a seventy day hold on voting on health care reform legislation today, according to the Huffington Post. The senators involved include three Democrats, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Ron Wyden, two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and one Independent, Joe Lieberman. Each these senators...

Last week, I took a look at the circle of former staffers turned health care lobbyists that surround Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus. The Senate Finance Committee is one of the two central committees in the Senate charged with formulating health care reform legislation. Knowing the connections...

Crossposted at the Sunlight Foundation blog.

Today, former senators Tom Daschle and Bob Dole released a plan for health care reform that is being hailed as a bipartisan way forward. Headlines blare about the Daschle/Dole plan for health care. But were these two to not have...

Crossposted at The Sunlight Foundation blog.

Yesterday, Sen. John Ensign admitted to an affair with a campaign staffer who was also the wife of Ensign's administrative assistant. The couple ensnared in this torrid love triangle is Douglas Hampton, the administrative assistant, and Cynthia Hampton, an employee of Ensign's 2008...

This post is cross-posted at the Sunlight Foundation blog.

Yesterday, President Obama held a public event with a number of leading health industry trade associations that have previously been reticent towards efforts to reform health care. The organizations included the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), America's Health...

This post is cross-posted at the Sunlight Foundation blog.

That seems to be a question raised from The Next Right's Soren Dayton. Dayton is taking the position that lobbyists and factions seeking to influence government do not have influence and therefore we should not require them to...

This post is cross posted at The Sunlight Foundation blog.

Earlier this week, Ryan Grimm reported on the words of Sen. Dick Durbin describing the power of the bankers and financial sector over Congress. Durbin remarked about the banking industry's relation with Congress by saying, "they frankly own...

As part of the Sunlight Foundation's Read the Bill campaign, we've been writing a series of case studies highlighting bills that slipped through Congress with little time for public input or for lawmakers to review. After reading the following, please go to ReadTheBill.org and sign the petition to...

Did you know that Senators still file their campaign finance reports on paper? Did you know that this process of handing over giant piles of paper delays the disclosure of the contributors to Senate campaigns, sometimes for months? Sen. Russ Feingold has proposed legislation to stop paper filing and require...

Denver. Minneapolis-St. Paul. Washington, DC. These are the hottest party spots right now for politicians and the lobbyists trying to influence them. If you want to know who's being feted by whom - and how much it costs - there's now a place to go.

The Sunlight Foundation just launched...

It's the final weeks before the 2008 Senate elections and you want to find out which companies are contributing to the candidates. How much is the telecom industry dumping into Norm Coleman's campaign coffers? What about the lobbyists giving to Mitch McConnell's campaign? Guess what? Thanks to outdated rules, Senate...

What ties the current scandals in Washington together? Tom Cruise. Cruise's name has popped up in the Duke Cunningham corruption case, the U.S. Attorney purge hearings, and the Lewis Libby trial. Cruise, the couch-jumping face of Scientology, is like a "body thetan" to Republicans who come in contact with...

Back at the beginning of the year the Justice Department announced that it was replacing seven U.S. Attorneys in an unprecedented move. The Attorney 'purge' was able to take place due to a provision allowing the Justice Department to unilaterally replace U.S. Attorneys for any reason that was snuck into...

As the Mark Foley page scandal continues to garner headline reportage and television news coverage it continues to damage the already tenuous position of Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois. The new line of defense on Hastert is that he is a fast actor who managed to remove Tom DeLay, Bob...