July 28, 2011

House Dems: Want a Gov’t Contract? Reveal Your Political Donations

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A bloc of more than 60 House Democrats wants President Obama sign an executive order forcing contractors to disclose their political contributions when applying for government contracts.. Their plea, outlined in a letter sent to the White House on Thursday, concerns a draft executive order leaked earlier this spring. The order is one course of action mulled by the Obama administration to minimize the impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. It’s also a response to the failure of the DISCLOSE Act, a Democratic-backed bill that would’ve required similar disclosure by government contractors. That bill failed in the Senate last year.

“Any business that is paid with taxpayer dollars should be required to disclose their political expenditures to the taxpayers,” Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), a chief supporter of the executive order, said in a statement today. “In the aftermath of the Citizens United decision, it’s even more important today to stand up for transparency and disclosure.”

Republicans and big business groups vehemently oppose the draft executive order. On Thursday, the US Chamber of Commerce urged members of Congress to support amendments by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to a defense appropriations bill that would preclude any donation disclosure requirement by federal agencies. It comes as no surprise that the Chamber, 60 Plus Association (known as the conservative answer to AARP), and conservative political advocacy groups oppose the order; if enacted, it would shed some light on what contractors help fund these groups, information kept confidential right now.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the powerful House oversight committee, also opposes the executive order, and threatened to use his subpoena power to bring an Obama administration official before Congress to explain the order. It would have been the first time House Republicans subpoenaed a White House official to come before Congress. In the end, the administration defused the showdown by dispatching Daniel Gordon, a federal procurement official who proved a frustrating witness by deflecting some questions and offering narrow, technical answers to others demanding information on the administration’s plans.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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