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Open-gov’t groups seek senator’s i.d. |
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By Elana Schor
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Posted: 04/18/07 07:40 PM [ET] |
Government-transparency groups launched an online quest yesterday to identify the GOP senator believed to be holding up a bill requiring the chamber’s campaign-finance forms to be filed electronically. But Republican sources said there is no hold, but merely a desire on their side of the aisle for more time to examine the bill.
Several GOP aides said Republicans’ delay of the electronic-filing bill would not be indefinite.
“I assume they want to have a chance to offer an amendment,” Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said, quipping, “I don’t have any problem with electronic filing, but I’m not necessarily interested in making it easier for the press to do their work.”
That rationale did not stop the Campaign Finance Institute and Sunlight Foundation from calling on voters to unmask the alleged hold by calling their senators. A similar grassroots effort cleared holds on a government-contracts database bill last year that was cosponsored by Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
The electronic-filing bill is cosponsored by Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
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