In an unprecedented move to increase congressional transparency, as of 1 pm this afternoon, the House of Representatives Statement of Disbursements is available online. 

The Statement of Disbursements (SOD) is a record of the public funds received and expended by Members of Congress in their pursuit of their official representational duties, as well as the expenditures of the House committees, leadership, and administrative offices.  Disclosure has been required by law since 1964, and must be published within 60 days of the end of a quarter.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) directed the Chief Administrative Officer in June 2009 to make the records available online.  Prior to today's release, the SOD were publically available, but only in book form either at Federal Depository Libraries or for purchase from the Government Printing Office.  Those who had the time and resources to access a copy were then faced with the cumbersome task of finding what they were looking for in a poorly indexed three volume, 3400 page document.  As a result, public access in practice was restricted.

This is a big step towards increased congressional transparency, and one that will surely increase public trust in the institution and in their representatives in the long run.  The United States has been, for the most part, spared the sorts of expense scandals that have plagued the British Parliament of late, but there were several instances in the early 1990s of Members of Congress misusing office funds for their personal gain.  Easy access to these records for both the public and the press will aid both groups in holding the people's representatives to account, and stands as a serious disincentive to abusing public funds.

As noted by John Wonderlich on the Sunlight Foundation blog, today's disclosure is only a first step.  This earliest edition of the website only features the SOD in a large PDF file with minimal search functionality.  The next logical step is to increase the user friendliness of the disclosure. 

The Senate, which issues its own Statement of Disbursements semi-annually, is due to put their expenditure reports online beginning in 2011 at the start of the 112th Congress, in order to allow time to develop sufficient web infrastructure for the release.

The Justice Department has reportedly come out in opposition to the request for appeal in the lawsuit Wilson v. Libby, et al.  The case was brought by Valerie Plame Wilson and former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV against four Bush administration officials for the public disclosure of Plame's role as a CIA operative.

In building the case for the invasion of Iraq, President Bush cited evidence that Saddam Hussein had attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium from Africa, which the dictator intended to use in the development of nuclear weapons.  The CIA and the State Department sent Joe Wilson, acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq and later ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe under President George H.W. Bush, to Niger in 2002 to verify the intelligence that Iraq had attempted to purchase this uranium.  Wilson alerted both the CIA and the State Department that the conclusion had been based on forged documents and was false.  He became a vocal critic of the Bush administration and its case for going to war.  Shortly thereafter, it was leaked by administration officials that his wife was a covert CIA operative.

The Wilsons sued former Vice President Dick Cheney; Karl Rove, once White House Deputy Chief of Staff and head of the Office of Political Affairs; former Chief of Staff to the Vice President Scooter Libby; and Richard Armitage, formerly Deputy Secretary of State, for damages under the First and Fifth Amendments and a common-law tort claim for the public disclosure of private facts.  The District Court and the Court of Appeals both dismissed the case, finding monetary damages to be an inappropriate remedy for constitutional claims, and that the Court lacked jurisdiction because administrative remedies under the Federal Tort Claims Act were not exhausted.  There have been no criminal charges as a result of the leak.  Libby was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for obstructing justice and making false statements to a grand jury investigating this case; however, this sentence was commuted by President Bush.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) responded to this decision: "It is surprising that the first time the Obama administration has been required to take a public position on this matter, the administration is so closely aligning itself with the Bush administration's views."  CREW also complained that "the government had moved to have the case dismissed before the Wilsons had the opportunity to uncover the details of how Ms. Wilson's covert identity was revealed."

Regardless of the legal merits of the case, the Obama administration's decision to openly oppose this appeal is disappointing.  It is unconscionable that there has been no accountability in a case where power was so clearly abused in a blatant effort to punish someone who brought the truth to light.  This highlights the need for a closer investigation of the abuses of executive power that transpired over the last eight years.

 Last Thursday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced a bill, the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2009, that would rein in the use of presidential signing statements. This legislation instructs federal and state courts to not treat presidential signing statements as authoritative in interpreting laws passed by Congress. It further enables Congress to file an amicus brief and present an oral argument in any case in which the interpretation or constitutionality of a law passed by Congress is in question. Courts would be additionally required to enter into the case record any joint resolution expressing the correct interpretation of the law in the eyes of Congress, as well as to expedite any such cases. 

Signing statements were first issued during the presidency of James Monroe. Historically, they have been used to give the president’s sense of why the particular statute is important and what it will accomplish; to assign credit to members of Congress who were instrumental in getting the legislation passed; and to instruct executive departments and agencies on how to administer the law, pursuant to the president’s power to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (U.S. Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 3). 

President Clinton issued 105 signing statements; President Bush issued 161.  What is more alarming than the sheer numbers, is that President Bush’s signing statements often raised constitutional concerns and other objections to several provisions of a law. The President used those statements in a way that threatened to render the legislative process a virtual nullity, making it completely unpredictable how certain laws will be enforced. Even where Congress managed to negotiate checks on executive power, the President used signing statements to override the legislative language and defy congressional intent.