Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Ensuring 72 Hours for Remaining Spending Bills
UPDATE (12/10): Before we could do so much as send an email asking for your support, the bill has passed by a vote of 221-202. It is a 1,000+ page piece of legislation that contains more than $1.1 trillion in spending for six of the largest federal agencies in the country, plus Medicare and Medicaid. Unbelievable.
Next up is the Defense Appropriations bill. I hope they get it right.
UPDATE (12/9): A House-Senate Committee has indeed combined six of the seven remaining appropriations bills into one omnibus bill – using the Transportation appropriation (HR 3288) as the vehicle and leaving out Defense (HR 3326) – which appropriates approximately $446.8 billion for FY 2010. We just finished downloading it. It’s very big.
Making sure the bill is online for at least 72 hours before debate seems eminently reasonable for a half trillion dollar piece of legislation, and is a requirement we know Congress is completely capable of fulfilling.
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It’s looking extremely likely that Congress will take up debate of six massive appropriations (read: “spending”) bills this week by combining them into one big omnibus bill and trying to pass them all at once before December 18th.
Assuming this scenario does indeed come to pass, it’s imperative that the House and Senate allow members of Congress, the media, and the public the necessary time to understand how our money is to be spent by putting the entire omnibus bill online for at least 72 hours before it’s debated.
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Over the years, it’s gotten harder to read the final bill
The year is winding down and for Congress that means it is time to pass the final versions of bills known as conference reports. Over the years, conference reports have been the biggest offenders in their timely availability for lawmakers and the public to read. Since 1999, nearly 80% of all conference reports were voted on in the House of Representatives without being available for at least 72 hours prior to floor consideration.Conference reports are the product of negotiations between the House and Senate after each chamber has passed different versions of the same bill. These reports contain the various compromises made between the two chambers of Congress.
In 1970, Congress passed the Congressional Reorganization Act of 1970, which required all committee and conference reports be made available to lawmakers (note: not the public) for three days prior to consideration on the floor of either chamber. This requirement was established in both the House and Senate rules. As evidenced by the recent decline in availability, the rule is subject to be waived.
In the House the decision to waive this rule is made by the House Rules Committee. The Rules Committee has jurisdiction over nearly all legislation before it comes to the floor for consideration. Their job is to establish the rules for debate of a particular bill or conference report. This includes deciding which rules to waive for consideration.
The earliest data immediately available (via thomas.loc.gov) is from the 93rd Congress (1973-1974). This Congress rarely waived the new three day holdover rule on conference reports. Only 25% of conference reports considered in the House were available to lawmakers for fewer than 72 hours. The seventies marked a period where regular congressional order was held in higher esteem. (Continue reading…)
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Manager’s Amendment Posted, Clock Begins
Earlier this week, John Wonderlich wrote about the promised 72 hour online posting of the House health care bill and that the fulfilling of that promise is setting a new benchmark for transparency — all major legislation should be available online for at least 72 hours before consideration. Last night, House Democrats posted the final Manager’s Amendment to the health care bill to the House Rules Committee web site (you can see it here), signaling that they are ready to bring the bill to a vote in 72 hours. This is yet another acknowledgement that the public and lawmakers are entitled to review all important pieces of major pieces of legislation for at least 72 hours prior to consideration.
A Manager’s Amendment is a partial substitute for the underlying legislation that often includes many last minute compromises to gain support from lawmakers on the fence. There is no required procedure for the public disclosure of Manager’s Amendments, but most are posted with the list amendments to be considered on the Rules Committee web site, usually the day before consideration.
Over the summer the House leadership took heat for releasing alternate versions of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) immediately prior to a vote. One sticking in particular was the release of the three-hundred plus page Manager’s Amendment the night before the final vote.
While the proposed 72 hour rule written into H. Res. 554 (the Read the Bill bill) does not cover amendments to bills, the decision to provide adequate time for the health care bill Manager’s Amendment is highly commendable. These long amendments are farther reaching in scope than other amendments and amount to an extra-final version of legislation that is not recognized in most people’s mental image of “How A Bill Becomes A Law.” Acknowledging that the bill’s language should be available at all stages for at least 72 hours before action is taken is an extremely important step in the right direction.
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Ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi About Health Care
Tomorrow morning at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, the Sunlight Foundation joins Blogher in moderating a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about health care. Blogger participants will have the chance to talk to Pelosi directly and ask her about issues deeply affecting their lives.
Pelosi has already committed to posting the final version of health care legislation for 72 hours before it comes to a vote. I hope to ask her how she plans to handle the longer term issue of lobbying disclosure reform, given what we’ve seen in recent weeks with the health care lobby wars going at full blast.
To sign up to ask your own question, click here. Or if you’d like me to ask something, please let me know in the comments section below.
This call is the fourth in a series, which has also included Rep. George Miller, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, and Sen. Amy Klochubar. All have spoken out about the importance of transparency in the health care debate and beyond. Here is Rep. Miller, exerpted from a transcript of a call last week:
Nancy Watzman: And I’d like to ask you a very quick question as representative of the Sunlight Foundation which cares very much about transparency in government. I’m wondering what will you see transparency playing in this, you know, in the debate and what role you think it should play?
George Miller: Well, you know, I think it’s a very important part of this debate. As you know when we finally passed the three bills prior to the August break they were up on the Internet.
My Committee site, my personal site got an exceptional number of hits from people who either read it or in fact downloaded it. It was quite amazing the number of – numbers of people who downloaded it.
And I assume the other committees and the speaker site and other sites in the Congress got those same kinds of requests. As we now near the end of this process, when this bill is finalized, I mean, as I said earlier we’re going to go to the Congressional Budget Office, we’ll get new costs and then we’ll have to make changes according to that.
And then when we’re ready to introduce the bill, when the bill’s introduced that bill will be on the Internet for 72 hours. And if there is a manager’s amendment which would be – usually it deals with making relatively small changes but it could be some other issue that pops up.
And if that manager’s amendment – when it is approved by the Rules Committee that will also have to be on there for 72 hours. So in my, you know, ordinarily around here you introduce the bill.
That bill would be on the Internet for 72 hours. During that time you might be putting together a manager’s amendment so – and that manager’s amendment is approved by the Rules Committee.
Another 72 hours would run so you can see here spaces of time, you know, made – whether it’s two 72-hour periods or something – somewhat longer than that. But the final drafts of the bill and the manager’s amendment will both be available on the Internet for that period of time. Speaker Pelosi is committed to that and the rest of the issue is committed to that.
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Help Get More Read the Bill Discharge Petition Signatures
Yesterday, Lisa Rosenberg wrote about the discharge petition for H. Res. 554, the Read the Bill Bill. Already the petition has had an effect. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she would not bring the health care reform bill to the floor until it had been online for 72 hours. The discharge petition would allow the bill to be brought to a vote without committee consideration. This could be the only way to get a vote on the bill this year. Currently, there are 173 signers of the discharge petition — all of those signatures came in two days! The petition needs 218 signatures to force the bill to the floor.At this moment there are only three Democrats who have signed onto the petition. They are Reps. Brian Baird, Walt Minnick and Parker Griffith. There are 32 Democratic cosponsors of H. Res. 554 who have yet to sign the petition. If you care to call them and let them know that they should sign the petition, please do. You can see the list below and find their contact information at Open Congress. (Continue reading…)
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This Week in Transparency – July 2, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:
Last Friday evening’s June 26th program, CNN’s Lou Dobbs broadcasted a piece by correspondent Louise Schiavone about the Cap and Trade Energy Bill that the House of Representatives was to vote on and pass later that evening. Schiavone interviewed Jake Brewer, Sunlight’s engagement director, who said, “This is the kind of bill that’s going to affect our economy on a massive scale, our climate, our national security, and is not the kind of thing to be taken lightly. The opacity of this process is — to be perfectly honest, it’s infuriating.” Schiavone then stated erroneously that Sunlight opposed the bill. For the record, Sunlight has no position on the content of the bill itself, but advocates for the Congress to put all non-emergency legislation online for 72 hours before voting on it. The transcript can be read here, and the video is below.
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This Week In Transparency – June 26, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:
CNN interviewed Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, in an article on lobbyists and the need for disclosure of their interactions with congressional lawmakers and other federal officials.
Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times reported on the fact that, five months into his administration, President Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited the five days, as he promised during his election campaign. She noted how open government and other watchdog groups have criticized the president for not living up to his pledge. Seelye quotes Ellen as saying it’s less important for the president to wait before signing a bill than it is for the Congress to wait 72 hours before voting on it. “There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless.” The article also has an accompanying video.
Politico’s Victoria McGrane reported on how the Senate is considering putting all their office expenses — including staff salaries — online, as well as requiring campaign fundraising reports to be published on the Web. The mere fact that the Senate leadership has conducted a whip count is an encouraging sign for the reforms’ passage, McGrane writes. And she quotes Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s , “They wouldn’t be talking about bringing it up for a vote if it wasn’t pretty solid.”
The Washington Examiner reports on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington calling on the Obama administration to release the names of health care executives who have visited the White House. “If you are going to criticize other people for secrecy, you better have an open door,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “They talk about transparency more than they exhibit it.”
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300 Pages Out of Thin Air
Today is the day that the House plans to vote on the cap and trade bill that has mysteriously changed this week. Last night, the bill changed again. We are now looking at an additional 300-pages that will be considered as amending H.R. 2998, the replacement bill of origins unknown. This is what the House Rules Committee tells us:
[I]n lieu of the amendment recommended by the Committee on Energy and Commerce now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of H.R. 2998, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted.
This means that H.R. 2998, which will be considered as an amendment in the form of a substitute, will include an additional 300 pages approved by the Rules Committee that will not be voted on. Let me see if I can run this down quickly and succinctly:
- The original bill, H.R. 2454, approximately 1,000 pages, was reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
- It was replaced this week by H.R. 2998, 1,201 pages, which will be voted on as an amendment in the form of a substitute.
- The Rules Committee, last night, released a committee report that includes a 300-page amendment to H.R. 2998. This 300-page amendment, the Waxman amendment (#121), is considered as adopted upon an affirmative vote for H.R. 2998, the amendment in the form of the substitute.
This means that we are looking at 300 extra pages added to the bill overnight. Stay tuned for more and go to ReadTheBill.org to tell your congressman that we need time to read the bills.
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This Week In Transparency – June 19, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:
In Sunday’s print edition, The New York Times editorialized about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering electronic disclosure of lawmakers’ expense spending. They also encouraged the Senate to open up as well. Candidates for the Senate are the only federal candidates who fail to make their campaign finances available online in a timely fashion. “A measure to finally prod the Senate into modern times with electronic campaign filing awaits action, providing Republican obstruction can be defused. That’s not enough. It should be followed up by the Senate also putting expenses on line.” Getting the Senate to pass timely online disclosure is a Sunlight priority.
Also in its Sunday edition, The Virginia-Pilot editorialized about Congress opening up its data online. “Until recently, members of Congress have expended little effort to make their reports viewable online. But recent stories by The (Wall Street) Journal, as well as lobbying by government watchdog groups, apparently spurred lawmakers into action.” The editorial notes Sunlight pointed out that (Pelosi’s) plan calls for the reports to be posted in a “portable document format,” or PDF, file. However, a searchable database would be much more user-friendly, allowing taxpayers to pull up and compare multiple reports.
NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein reports on Sunlight obtaining and posting a version of the RFP for the Recovery.gov redesign. Sternstein quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, “We’re not in government contracting, but we’re in transparency … and it’s crazy that the only place you can get this RFP” on Sunlight’s Web site. “The reason that we’re doing this is so we can inject ourselves into the process and expose it to the public,” Clay said. “We’ll be blogging about the whole thing. This Web site is supposed to serve the people, so let the people build it to their specifications.”
On Tuesday, MAPLight.org and their partner the California First Amendment Coalition achieved a huge victory when the State of California agreed to give the public access to the state government database of how state lawmakers vote. In December, the two groups filed a lawsuit seeking access to legislative votes. In response, the state has set up a database of Senate and Assembly bills and votes that it updates daily. MAPLight is working to combine data on all contributions California state legislators receive with the new database of how each politician votes. “It will combine data on all money given to members of the California state legislature with the newly available database of how each politician votes, revealing patterns of money and influence never before possible,” Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, blogged about the victory for open government earlier in the week. The Berkeley, Calif., -based MAPLight constructed a similar database on Congress, which The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog highlighted on Tuesday.
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This Week In Transparency – June 5, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from the past week:
Late last Friday, National Public Radio ran a piece by Andrea Seabrook about the Obama administration’s “Open Government Initiative,” a three-part process to craft recommendations on open government. Seabrook quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, saying the government should make it a priority to get the most important information up sooner. “And, in my mind, you got – priority data is the data that affects the public trust in its institutions. So, you know, personal financial disclosures, lobbying reports – there are many lobbying reports that are found in the Justice Department that have never seen the light of day. That is to say, they’re not online – that being the definition of light of day in the 21st century.”
The second phase of the White House’s Open Government Initiative was a “brainstorming” session where the administration invited the public to submit ideas on how to achieve and sustain an unprecedented level of openness in government. The administration then encouraged participants to vote up or down on the ideas. They received 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on various ideas. House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (Ohio) submission to require Congress to honor a 72-hour public review period before voting on major spending bills ended up as one of the most popular, receiving nearly 1,000 votes. Roll Call (subscription required) and Federal Computer Week quote from Boehner’s statement noting Sunlight’s support for the 72-hour rule.
As normal, major press outlets depended on data from the Center for Responsive Politics to expose the power and influence of big money in Washington. The Wall Street Journal reported that in the first three months of 2009, the financial industry spent $27.6 million on lobbying and made $286,000 in campaign contributions to Congressional lawmakers. One industry goal was to get Congress to amend certain financial rules. So far, The Journal reported, they’ve succeeded in loosening one key accounting regulation and are working to get ride of it altogether. The Washington Post used CRP data to show the growing influence of tech titans Google, Microsoft, AT&T and Verizon. The same article mentions that the Center for Digital Democracy wrote to the White House protesting the Obama administration’s appointment of Google’s top lobbyist to the position of deputy technology officer. “We believe no special-interest connected person should assume a position of vital importance to the country’s future,” they wrote.
(Continue reading…)
