Ensign steps forward on campaign disclosure bill

A bill to force senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically may get new life after Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) on Monday night disclosed that he had been secretly blocking the plan for months.

{mosads}The revelation opens the door for a renewed lobbying campaign by watchdog groups to push Ensign to drop his objection to the broadly supported measure. The disclosure also allows supporters to attempt to resolve Ensign’s concerns, which had been unknown until Monday night.

The bill, which has 41 co-sponsors, would put the Senate in line with House and presidential candidates by requiring Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically.

Ensign, who is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP conference, said he does not oppose the bill. But he wants an amendment considered to the bill that would require outside groups filing ethics complaints against senators to disclose their donors.

“We have a problem going on in the Senate where there are outside groups that are filing ethics complaints and they are doing it for purely political reasons,” Ensign said.

But Democrats objected to Ensign’s push for consideration of that amendment, saying it was unrelated to the underlying measure and should be taken up separately.

Supporters of the bill credited the newly enacted lobbying and ethics law for convincing Ensign to acknowledge the hold, which is a procedural tool used to signal to Senate leaders that a senator plans to block the bill on the floor, possibly by a filibuster.

“I believe that the new provision under the new law is the reason that this individual identified himself,” said Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, the lead sponsor of the campaign finance bill. “I don’t think that would have happened had it not been for the positive deterrent effect that this new legislation has.”

Over the years, the use of placing an anonymous hold has grown, infuriating watchdog groups, which say a senator can thereby avoid public scrutiny while thwarting Senate action. The new law requires that senators who are anonymously blocking a bill make their hold public within six legislative days.

“There is simply no reason that the information in Senate campaign finance reports should remain less accessible to the public than any other campaign finance reports,” Feingold said Monday night on the Senate floor.