ProPublica Eye on the Reporting Network

Lotsa Help

The American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, whose 81,000 participants inform reporting in newsrooms nationwide, has asked its members to participate in our Super Bowl Blitz. Thank you!  

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Tune In

WNYC’s Brian Lehrer is hosting the Super Bowl Blitz this morning on his show. Got a few minutes? Tune in, make a call, and report in to him on the experience.

The effort, which launched Tuesday, aims to find out which members of Congress are attending this year’s Super Bowl and how they got their tickets. We know the NFL sets aside a large number of tickets for public officials and corporations to buy at face value. And those tickets can be used to give congressmen perks. We’re trying to find out — with the help of our readers — which members of Congress are going, and then our reporters will start following the money trail.

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Super Bowl Blitz Focuses on Members of the Taxing and Spending Committees

With only 10 days left to survey 535 members of Congress as part of our Super Bowl Blitz, we’ve put stars next to the names of lawmakers we think are the most important to reach. These include all the members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and the tax-writing committees in each chamber—Ways and Means in the House and Finance in the Senate.

Why Appropriations? The disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff said it best. He famously called the Appropriations Committees “favor factories,” in part because they oversee billions of dollars in earmarks stuffed into funding bills each year with little scrutiny. Duke Cunningham, a former House member now serving an eight-year, four-month prison sentence for bribery, was able to get those bribes because he was on Appropriations.

Readers of a certain age might recall Wilbur Mills, considered one of the most powerful men in Congress when he was caught frolicking with exotic dancer Fanne Fox in 1974. Mills was 65 at the time, and the dancer’s interest was presumed to stem largely from his stature as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, inspiring a line of doggerel that has become an enduring tribute to the influence of the committee: “She was only a stripper at the Silver Slipper, but she had her Ways and Means.” The tax-writing committees give multibillion-dollar favors to industries and companies, dwarfing individual earmarks.

We feel it’s important to target those members of Congress with the most direct grip on the nation’s purse strings, and that’s why we focus on the taxing and spending committees. Of course, we’ve also put stars next to the names of the top congressional leaders and those members of the House and Senate who lead funding arms for their parties.

If you want to help, here’s how.

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More Help

The Orange County Register is joining our Super Bowl Blitz. Stay tuned for their report.

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Our Super Bowl Blitz Update—We’ve Got a Quarter of Congress Covered

Here’s the latest on our Super Bowl Blitz: The effort, which launched Tuesday, aims to find out which members of Congress are attending this year’s Super Bowl and how they got their tickets. We know the NFL sets aside a large number of tickets for public officials and corporations to buy at face value. And those tickets can be used to give congressmen perks. We’re trying to find out—with the help of our readers—which members of Congress are going, and then our reporters will start following the money trail.

Yes, some members of Congress may try to obfuscate or dodge our questions. But we can do a lot with a list of yes’s, which reporter Marcus Stern explained in his recent post “When Is a ‘No’ Really a ‘No.’ “

So far, a quarter of Congress has been either finished or delegated. Phew.

Read more…

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