online and easily accessible to the public i've got daniel schulman policy counsel with the sunlight foundation here to talk more about this and daniel talk to me about some of the most significant changes that you think the senate should make to better represent the people well i think the most important change is right now the senate thinks of itself and really saw as one of the all this continuing deliberative bodies they don't think of themselves oftentimes in terms of what the public needs with their needs to be is a presumption of openness where if you go to a senator or a committee or to the chamber itself and you say i want this information that the risk the default answer is yes i'd be happy to give it to you here it is oh well we've got all these argue rules and procedures against why we can give you know against why we can't give them to you i think that's really the first person into star and from there all of our other recommendations follow. yeah and i think you outlined several different things and it's really interesting because as we know when our lawmakers get into the nitty g

the sunlight foundation reports during the 2012 collection cycle alone, superpacs spent $620 million. nobody believes corporations are people. they should not be able to use unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. my democratic colleagues and i will provide the house with an opportunity to consider a constitutional amendment to overturn the flawed citizens united decision. to finally remove the donations from our system. in addition to addressing the uncontrolled money, congress should be ensuring every american citizen can easily exercise their right to vote. voting is fundamental to what it means to be an american but in recent years, losing a concerted efforts to discourage voters from casting a ballot. under the claim that voter fraud is a serious threat, they have methodically advanced. methods range from enacting voter i.d. laws to reducing the number of voting machines in low-income neighborhoods. unfortunately, these discriminatory practices have indeed made a harder for citizens to vote. this past november, there were numerous voters being turned away from the

he is with the sunlight foundation. our goal is to look at the fact and fiction of what members of congress earn. probably one of the most repeated questions we get on this network -- pensions and benefits that members of congress receive. first of all, in terms of salary, what does a member of congress receive? guest: $174,000 per year. there are a couple of members who earn a little bit more. speaker of the house of $223,500. the majority leader -- minority leader and majority leader earn $193,400. host: why do the leaders earn less than the speaker? guest: it is the history, the tradition. host: earning $174,000 per year -- what does that get them? they have to have an apartment at least in washington and their residence back in their home state. guest: it does not get that far. b.c. is a very expensive place to live -- d.c. is a very expensive place to live. a lot of these things -- it is not a lot of money. if you look historically over time, members of congress are earning less money than they would have been othe

our guest is daniel shumlin, with the sunlight foundation. -- daniel schuman, with the sunlight foundation. 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c- span. >> student cam video entries with your message to the president are now due. by friday, january 18. there's $50,000 in total prizes. for more details, go to studentcam.org. >> the future of energy policy and u.s. independence. this is half an hour. >> our next session is on energy in 2013. we have three panelists. marvin odum, fred krupp and christine todd whitman. marvin odum, president of shell oil company. [applause] >> good to see everyone here. thank you for having us. where is energy demand going? i will use part of my time to do that. this is a story that is probably familiar to everyone in the room. the population from 7 billion today to 9 billion in the middle of the century, potentially doubling energy demand. i will tell you the one phrase that caught me. that kind of growth is the equivalent of creating a new city of 1 million people every week for the next 30 years. when you think about the energy consumed by a city of 1 million people,

to establish, along with the best practices that are going on in new york, chicago, and the sunlight foundation, that is to create a position in the city, basically establishing a data office, an open data officer for the city, somebody that's going to help jay naff. jay is like our external innovation officer. he's helping me connect up all the time with all of the different companies in the city that are establishing and creating things. but i need somebody on the inside. we have a 60-department bureaucracy. they're still working in a lot of different silos and one of the things that we still have to do is get them on a higher level of sharing their data. so, establishing a chief data officer for the city that will work with all the different departments, establish some additional standards for them to create pinpoints in every department of what their data is, what they may not be aware of that they're collecting and computers in our departments and allow that data to flow out. this will be a good addition and a great improvement. it is part of the best practices that we're learning across t

the sunlight foundation reports during the 2012 collection cycle alone, superpacs spent $620 million. nobody believes corporations are people. they should not be able to use unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. my democratic colleagues and i will provide the house with an opportunity to consider a constitutional amendment to overturn the flawed citizens united decision. to finally remove the donations from our system. in addition to addressing the uncontrolled money, congress should be ensuring every american citizen can easily exercise their right to vote. voting is fundamental to what it means to be an american but in recent years, losing a concerted efforts to discourage voters from casting a ballot. under the claim that voter fraud is a serious threat, they have methodically advanced. methods range from enacting voter i.d. laws to reducing the number of voting machines in low-income neighborhoods. unfortunately, these discriminatory practices have indeed made a harder for citizens to vote. this past november, there were numerous voters being turned away from the

received a contribution from the nra at some point in their career, although according to the sunlight foundationdemocrats it's 11%. with long oddings of getting a ban through congress some governors are moving ahead with state-wide bans instead. governor o'malley is proposing one of these strictest in the nation. it would ban assault weapons and restrict visitor access to school, and require perspective gun owners to provide finger continues to police, and undergo a thorough background check. but how much teeth can a state ban have. joining me now is katrina vanden huevel, editor and publisher of "the nation." welcome back inside "the war room"? >> thank you governor. >> jennifer: i want to talk about the strategy of this and other issues. the president's strategy on it, the progressive base wants the president to push for a ban on assault weapons. but if it's not going to pass congress, if he can count, should he still pick this fight just on the assault weapons ban? >> can i refrain that question. because it's not just a progressive base. i think of mayors against illegal guns, and the law enf

this is a strongly bipartisan that is held by transparency groups, including the sunlight foundation. this rules package amends the restrictions on the use of private aircraft contained in the code of conduct so as to harmonize house and senate rules. these changes provide more flexibility to members whose district including rural and remote locations are not easily reached by car and do not have scheduled air service. they will also facilitate travel during extraordinary circumstances, such as an an emergency or aftermath in a natural disaster. . at the same time they make sure they are consistent with house rules. they will make sure members pay a fair market rate for air travel regardless of the method used. together the amendments contained in this resolution will better ensure that elective representations, elective representatives and employees and officials of the house can execute their official duties in an official, ethical and transparent way. section three of the rules package makes a numb of separate orders. the most significant among them, eliminates provisions in the af

folks, an extraordinary number of people know what you do but most folks don't know what the sunlight foundationow do we scale that. >> until campaigns become as important as jobs and healthcare and clean air then it will always be a secondary issue and they will vote based on those larger issues. and the campaign finance issue has become such a sort of cynical response by the public that they're not going to vote on that. they're going to vote for the politician who is going to help them get their kid a better education or get their mother in a better situation for elder care facility. >> gavin: the frustration for me is you've got extraordinary people. i really believe this in politics who are trapped by an extraordinarily bad system you saw this with president obama who said i can't stand these super pacs but realized you cannot unilaterally disarm if you're in this game, and he would be crushed and rolled over. how do we reconcile that. good people trapped in a bad system. how do we ultimately manifest that. >> well, i think you need someone who breakaway and who will understand, and i belie

you know how the sunlight foundation added up political spending in this past election to see who got the most bang for their buck in their political spending? it was really bad on the right. the republican party's house campaign committee spent almost $65 million, but only 32% of what they spent went to campaigns in which their candidate was successful. so two-to-one, their money was spent on losing. it was worse for the republican party's senate campaign. for their investment of $32 million, only 24% paid off in terms of races that went the way they wanted to. three to one, their money was spent losing. freedomworks was about the same. and the chamber of commerce, which is supposed to be such an impressible and unassailable campaign juggernaut, the chamber of commerce spent $32 million, but less than 7% of what they spent went to winning candidates they wanted to win, or against losing candidates that they wanted to lose. less than 7%. they were 93% ineffective in what they spent. even worse than that was karl rove's american crossroads, which was like the conservative politics marq

. >> reporter: kathy kiely with the sunlight foundation says it's a revolving door of lobbyists and politicians and staff members and big payoff jobs that erode americans' faith in a system that seems to be driven by special interest, access and money. >> what people do see is that is there's a network of individuals who don't necessarily have the public interests at heart. they have special interests at heart. when people have the impression that those special interests are dominating washington and the way things work here, it reduces people's faith in their government. and it probably should. >> reporter: technically speaking, joann emerson is not becoming a lobbyist, at least not yet. she has been named the new ceo of the national rural electric cooperative association. she will direct a group that has a staff of lobbyists that spent $3.5 million handing out campaign contributions in the last election and has spent many more millions lobbying congress. her predecessor was paid $1.6 million a year. that predecessor, a former congressman himself, and a registered lobbyist. glenn english. so t

you showed the statistic from the sunlight foundation that shows that their top pac performed worse thanin the nation in the november elections. you know, they lost seven out of eight senate races where they put more than $100,000 in. they got clobbered in the presidential race. their campaign slogan was all in. they were going all in because they were telling people that president obama literally was going to destroy all freedom in america. well, no one responded to that message. no one cared. so if on one hand they want to claim that they single-handedly supposedly won the 1994 and 2000 election, well, you've got to own up to getting shellacked in this one. >> lad everitt, the director of communications for the coalition to stop gun violence, taking an aggressive and proudly aggressive approach on this issue. keep us posted on how you see this going, sir. it's nice to have you here. thank you. >> thanks so much, rachel. >> thanks. >>> so how does the idea of zero american troops in afghanistan sound to you? the obama administration apparently wants to know how that sounds to you. that

the last cycle the sunlight foundation found only one % of the money they spent tennessee of millionsctually was successful. >> wow? >> 99% say their money is lost. >> so much for the nra. john nichols as a friend of bill. john mccain fugelsang joins us when we come back. >> this is "the bill press show." [ music ] going to do the young turks. i think the number one thing that viewers like about the young turks is that we're honest. they know that i'm not bs'ing them with some hidden agenda, actually supporting one party or the other. when the democrats are wrong, they know that i'm going to be the first one to call them out. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. [ music ] >> heard around the country and seen on current tv this is "the bill press show." >> bill: wow. 33 minutes after the hour. what a great date, friday january 18th. this is the full court press coming to you live from our nation's capitol. that's washington, d.c. >> that's where we are on capitol hill brought to

. >> with nick -- [inaudible] from the sunlight foundation. on the fundraising issue, why the reversal from four years ago as far as giving the amounts and sort of -- [inaudible] about each donor? it's a reversal from not only the first obama term, but george w. bush actually gave the amounts of each donor ahead of time. so what specifically decision, what decision was made to change that? was it donors' request? was there, you know, could you raise more money by keeping the amounts -- >> sure. i mean, to be honest, none of those were the considerations. my understanding is that we just kind of, you know, each one of these is created anew every four years. they are not continuations of the same committee from four years ago. like i said, we're lucky enough to have some of us who have been asked to do it last time, and this was just the decision in this instance in terms of disclosure. and, again, begin the fact there is the sec requirement, this will all be public. this was our attempt to go above and beyond that and add a layer of transparenc

. >> reporter: kathy kiley will the sunlight foundation says it's a revolving door of lobbyists and politiciansl interest access and money. >> when people have the impression that those special interests are dominating washington and the way things work here, it reduces people's faith in their government. and it probably should. >> reporter: technically speaking, jo ann emerson is not becoming a lobbyist, at least not yet. she has been named the new ceo of the national rural electorate cooperative association. she will direct a group that has a staff of lobbyists, that spent $3.5 million handing out campaign contributions in the last election, and has spend many more millions lobbying congress. her predecessor was paid $1.6 million a year. that predecessor, a former congressman himself, and a registered lobbyist. glen english. >> so this organization must value your participation in congress more than your ceo experience, when you came in, and that's the same thing with her. >> oh, i think so. i think that's probably true. i think the membership recognizes out there that one of the very importa

and here is the sunlight foundation, five house members who got the most n.r.a. money. your picture there. they say in 2012 cycle you received about $56,000 from the n.r.a. guest: certainly gun owners know of my long track record of supporting second amendment rights. they have a tendency to support my efforts to run for office. no question about that. host: so i was wondering about high capacity magazine rounds. folks are saying that for the newtown tragedy, it might not have stopped them but might have slowed him down to the point where he would not have been able to kill as many children. are you open to looking at that? guest: we look at all these things. but past studies have shown that the magazine size does not make a difference. again, we'll be happy to look at additional evidence in that regard. in this particular case we are still not provided with all of the information related to how this occurred. there are reports that the so-called assault weapon was not used. that was -- it was handguns used. again we would like to have more information. it's also import