Will Deficit-Fighting Super Committee Reveal Campaign Cash and Lobbyist Ties?

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Congress’ 12-member “Super Committee,” charged with crafting a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit in the next decade, is up and running. The bipartisan panel of veteran lawmakers first convened on Sept. 8, and is plowing ahead so as to meet its Nov. 23 deadline to deliver its budget-slashing recommendations.

As the fiscal fighting ramps up, fourteen good-government and transparency groups are calling for Super Committee members to publicize any campaign donations received and any lobbyist meetings while the committee does its work. The reasoning here is obvious: If committee members are meeting behind closed doors with, say, oil industry lobbyists at the same time they’re debating deficit-cutting measures, they could be swayed to oppose closing tax loopholes for oil companies, worth an estimated $4.4 billion a year—and the public would never know about it.

Failing to disclose donations and interactions with lobbyists, the DC-based Sunlight Foundation argues, “will reinforce the public’s mistrust of the deficit reduction process and risk delegitimizing the Committee’s work.”

At least one lawmaker, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), has said he won’t fundraise and will limit contact with lobbyists during his time on the Super Committee, which is made up of six House members and six Senators, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Here’s the letter from good-government and transparency groups to the Super Committee:

14 Groups Call for Super Committee Transparency

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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