Over the following months, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives met with top White House aides dozens of times to hammer out a deal that would secure industry support for the administration’s health care reform agenda in exchange for the White House abandoning key elements of the president’s promises to reform the pharmaceutical industry. They flooded Congress with campaign contributions, and hired dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders to push their case. How they did it—pieced together from news accounts, disclosure forms including lobbying reports and Federal Election Commission records, White House visitor logs and the schedule Sen. Max Baucus releases voluntarily—is a testament to how ingrained the grip of special interests remains in Washington.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama declared his intention to include all stakeholders as he sought to reform the nation’s health care system, but also supported key Democratic health reform policies. Among these were several that targeted the pharmaceutical industry: Allowing re-importation of drugs from first world countries with lower drug prices and providing Medicare with negotiating authority over prescription drug prices in the recently enacted Part D program. These weren’t just promises, Obama had already voted for both of them as a senator in 2007. (Roll Call Vote 132 and Roll Call Vote 150.)

Set to carry out this agenda were two Capitol Hill veterans, schooled in the monied Washington culture, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. Emanuel was a former fundraiser, Clinton administration official, investment banker and member of the Democratic leadership in Congress. Messina was the former campaign manager and chief of staff to the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Both were known for their unparalleled legislative abilities.

Because of Obama’s decision to develop a plan operating through the legislative process, members of Congress also played key roles. Early on, the pharmaceutical companies were told to deal directly with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Baucus would be the vehicle for the deal worked out behind the scenes by the White House and PhRMA.

Central to this effort was PhRMA president, CEO and top lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a longtime Democratic member of Congress who switched party affiliations after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. By switching parties Tauzin was able to maintain his influence and even rose to be Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. Tauzin became the poster child of Washington’s mercenary culture. He crafted a bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients, one that provided major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. Medicare would not be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs and reimportation of drugs from first world countries would not be allowed. A few months after the bill passed, Tauzin announced that he was retiring from Congress and would be taking a job helming PhRMA for a salary of $2 million.

Tauzin’s job change became fodder for a campaign ad that then presidential candidate Barack Obama ran in the spring of 2008 simply titled “Billy.” It featured the candidate, sleeves rolled up, talking to a salon of gasping Americans about the ways of Washington. “The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through, went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year.” The screen fades to black to inform the viewer that, “Barack Obama is the only candidate who refuses Washington lobbyist money,” while the candidate continues his lecture, “Imagine that. That’s an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know, I don’t want to learn how to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game playing.”

Aiding PhRMA in their outreach to Congress would be a squadron of lobbyists to push their health care reform priorities. Over the course of 2009, the drug industry trade group spent over $28 million on in house and hired lobbyists. Aside from PhRMA’s massive in-house lobbying operation, the trade group hired 48 outside lobbying firms. The total number of lobbyists working for PhRMA in 2009 reached 165. Some 137 of those 165 lobbyists representing PhRMA were former employees of either the legislative or executive branches. Of these dozens were former congressional staffers including two former chiefs of staff to Max Baucus.

According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, drug makers contributed huge sums to congressional campaign committees during the same period—from January to the end of October (4th quarter numbers are still being totaled), industry political action committees, employees and their family members flooded lawmakers with over $8 million. Those contributions tilted heavily to Democrats over Republicans by a 57 to 42 percent margin—the first time in any election cycle going back to 1990, the first year that the Center for Responsive Politics began tracking industry giving, that Democrats were so favored. Given their majorities on Capitol Hill, and the new President’s intention to reform America’s health care system, the new tilt was perhaps not surprising.

***

On March 5, the White House held a meeting with major health care industry leaders to try to bring them to the table and see what could be done to gain their support. In attendance were Billy Tauzin, president, CEO and top lobbyist for PhRMA, Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, America’s Health Care Plans (AHIP) Chairman Karen Ignani, Tom Donohue of the Chamber of Commerce and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations’ Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. A day before the White House meeting Tauzin appeared on CNBC touting health care reform and promising to work closely with the Obama administration. In the interview he touted it as an “optimistic plan”, acknowledging that the industry did have a few problems but was glad to have a chance to discuss these. Some were caught dumb-founded by this apparent change of heart on behalf of an industry long adverse to health care reforms.

On April 15, Jim Messina and Jon Selib, chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, convened a meeting at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) with leaders of organized labor and health care groups, including PhRMA. At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be almost entirely funded by PhRMA. The two groups spent $24 million on their advertising campaigns; the contract to produce and place ads went to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD, which owed Axelrod $2 million.

In the next month, CEO’s from pharmaceutical companies would meet with Baucus and administration officials at least four times. These talks preceded a major public event at the White House, one critical to its strategy to promote health care reform. On May 11, PhRMA and other trade industry groups pledged cost cutting measures to the White House that would save, they claimed, upwards of $2 trillion over the next decade. President Obama announced the deal in the State Dining Room, flanked by leaders of the various trade groups; the administration followed up with a media blitz in the press and on the White House Web site.

The next day, Healthy Economy Now’s PhRMA funded ad campaign ran their first advertisement in support of the health care reform process calling for the government to finally “fix” the nation’s health care cost problems. While many elements of the $2 trillion cost cutting pledge fell apart, the drug industry remained committed to the process in the hopes that they could ultimately win out and defeat the provisions they most feared in closed-door meetings with the White House.

The first occurred on June 2. White House visitor logs show PhRMA’s top executives, including Tauzin, and industry CEOs met with Sarah Fenn from the White House Office of Health Care Reform. On the same day, the publicly available schedule of Senator Max Baucus shows Tauzin and the same industry CEOs met the Senate Finance Committee chairman. What ultimately resulted from these coordinated meetings would be revealed by Baucus on June 20.

In a press release featuring a statement by Tauzin, Baucus revealed that the pharmaceutical industry had accepted $80 billion in cost cutting measures to be included in the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill. According to news reports, Baucus initially proposed $100 billion in cost cutting measures, but the executives and lobbyists meeting on June 2 were able to win the lower figure.

The terms of the initial cost-cutting deal included $30 billion go directly towards closing the “donut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage.  The “donut hole” is a term for the gap in coverage that occurs within the Medicare prescription drug coverage. For those purchasing prescription drugs through the Medicare program coverage cuts off at $2,700 spent and does not pick back up again until $6,154 is spent by the participant. The amount proposed in the deal, 50 percent coverage for drugs within the coverage gap, however, would not completely close the “donut hole.”

In Baucus’ press release, Tauzin is quoted as saying, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and, working together, we can make this hope for a better tomorrow a reality today.” This “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity also extended to the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to blunt the long-term Democratic agenda of lowering prescription drug prices through Medicare negotiations, re-importation and quicker release of generics onto the market. After making such a grand statement of support through cost cutting proposals it was time for the pharmaceutical industry to finally force the White House and Democrats to take certain chips off the table.

Baucus proceeded with a plan to convene a bipartisan group in an effort to craft the bill desired by the White House. These participants included Democrats Kent Conrad and Jeff Bingaman and Republicans Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi and Olympia Snowe. Baucus’ decision and the need to solidify deals with groups like the pharmaceutical industry – which were reliant on Baucus producing a bill – slowed down the legislative process making it impossible for Congress to meet the White House’s announced August recess deadline for passing health care reform.

Soon after, PhRMA’s big guns and industry lobbyists paid the White House another visit on July 7 and this time met with Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina (Baucus’ chief of staff Jon Selib is also listed in White House visitor logs for this meeting). In August, The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reported on an internal memo that was drafted at that meeting that outlined the policies that would not be allowed into any final version of health care reform. These included Medicare prescription drug negotiations, drug re-importation, and the lowering of prices for drugs available through Medicare Part D and Part B. The deal would be $80 billion in cost cutting and absolutely no more.

***

While the $80 billion deal was cut with Baucus’ committee, other congressional committees continued to mark-up their own versions of health care reform without the knowledge that the White House was relying on Baucus to produce the final product. In the House of Representatives, the House Energy & Commerce Committee leveled a direct threat to the $80 billion deal. Energy & Commerce Chair Henry Waxman sought to include all of the provisions that PhRMA had gotten the White House and Baucus to cut out of the reform bill. These included drug reimportation, Medicare negotiating power and speedier release of generics to the market. According to previous analysis of the measures proposed by the committee, these measures would have totaled hundreds of billions in cost cuts, far exceeding the $80 billion cap agreed to by the White House, Baucus and PhRMA.

The cost cutting measures passed in the Energy & Commerce bill spooked the board of PhRMA, which included all of the CEOs involved in the deal-cutting meetings with the White House and Baucus. The board pressured Tauzin to go public with the deal to ensure that the White House would recognize it and not renege. On August 4, the Los Angeles Times, in an exclusive report, featured quotes from Tauzin claiming that a deal between the White House and PhRMA existed and that, as Tauzin put it, “The White House blessed it.” Tom Hamburger wrote in the article, “For his part, Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe.”

The White House’s Jim Messina later confirmed Tauzin’s claim, stating, “The president encouraged this approach … He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”

Democratic lawmakers were furious. Rep. Raul Grijalva, chairman of the Progressive Caucus, asked, “Are industry groups going to be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie and we just fight over the crust?”

***

On September 7, Baucus’ bill made a private circulation on the Hill; pharmaceutical industry cost-cutting did not exceed $80 billion. Five days later, the New York Times reported that PhRMA planned to spend up to $150 million in an advertising blitz in support of Baucus’ bill. The Times noted that the ad spending “…would be a follow-up to the deal that drug makers struck in June with Mr. Baucus and the White House.” On September 16, Baucus released the full text of his legislation to the public.

The White House, PhRMA and Baucus still had to fight a few battles to keep the deal intact. The key amendment targeting the PhRMA deal in committee mark-up came from Sen. Bill Nelson from Florida, which has one of the largest Medicare participant populations in the nation. The pull of constituent needs clearly put Bill Nelson into a position to push for further cost cutting in Medicare prescription drug pricing. His target: closing the “donut hole” completely.

Nelson claimed that his amendment would generate $106 billion in revenue, or from PhRMA’s perspective increase their cost-cutting to $186 billion.  That would be unacceptable to PhRMA, to Baucus, to the White House and to the pharmaceutical industry who had made the deal. Other Senate Democrats, Tom Carper and Robert Menendez voted with Republicans and Baucus on the committee to defeat the amendment.  It is little surprise the Carper’s Delaware is home to AstraZeneca and Menendez’ New Jersey is home to Merck and Bristol-Myers-Squibb, all of which lobbied for the $80 billion cap.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced the final bill, with the cap in place, on November 19. Debate began on Dec. 3, and with it come one more attempt by members to change the terms of the deal. Senator Byron Dorgan introduced an amendment that would allow for drug re-importation, but as the date for voting drew near, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) released a letter objecting to the proposal that echoed pharmaceutical industry talking points: “…as currently written, the resulting structure would be logistically challenging to implement and resource intensive. In addition, there are significant safety concerns.” Dorgan’s amendment was defeated with numerous Democrats previously in support of reimportation switching to “no” votes.

On Christmas Eve, the bill passed the Senate with the PhRMA deal fully intact.

***

New Year’s Eve passed with no further action on health care reform. Public opinion regarding the health care reform bill had been slipping throughout 2009. It reached a fulcrum in the special election to replace the deceased senator Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts on January 19, 2010. Newly minted senator Scott Brown campaigned that he would be the senator to provide Republicans with the votes to filibuster the final health care reform bill. Democrats ran for cover. Despite having the largest majorities of any party since the 1970s, Democrats put the brakes on their agenda, particularly health care reform.

In the end, the pharmaceutical industry’s support for health care reform would be left up in the air. After spending $100 million in advertising in support of legislation that Tauzin and key executives hoped would be a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry, the legislative process had flat-lined. In February, the board of PhRMA, split over the deal cut by Tauzin, pushed Tauzin to resign his post.

In an interview with Diane Sawyer, President Obama owed up to failures in the process of passing health care reform, “[T]he health care debate as it unfolded legitimately raised concerns not just among my opponents, but also amongst supporters that we just don’t know what’s going on … And it’s an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of back room deals.”

• Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibiting corporations and labor organizations from using operating funds for advertisements in connection with any campaign for election for Federal office. H.J. Res 68
• To require the approval of a majority of a public company’s shareholders for any expenditure by that company to influence public opinion on matters not related to the company’s products or services. HR 4487
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporations in which foreign principals have an ownership interest. HR 4510
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit corporations which employ or retain registered lobbyists from making expenditures or disbursements for electioneering communications under such Act, and for other purposes. HR 4511
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporations which are owned or controlled by foreign principals, to increase the civil penalties applicable to foreign nationals who violate the ban, and for other purposes. HR 4517
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporations which are owned or controlled by foreign principals. HR 4522
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporations whose shareholders include any foreign principals. HR 4523
• A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to apply the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to domestic corporation which are owned or controlled by foreign principals. S 2954

Updated to include Jan 27-29:

• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require certain campaign-related communications paid for by a corporation or labor organization to include a statement identifying the chief executive officer of the corporation or the president of the labor organization, and for other purposes. HR 4527
• To amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to require the express authorization of a majority of shareholders of a public company for certain political expenditures by that company, and for other purposes. HR 4537
• To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to extend the ban on election activity by foreign nationals to election activity by domestic corporations which are subsidiaries of foreign principals. HR 4540
• To prohibit entities from using Federal funds to contribute to political campaigns or participate in lobbying activities. HR 4550
• A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to protect Federal, State, and local elections from the influence of foreign nationals. S 2959

More information on policy responses to CU (and perhaps an updated list of legislation) is available here.

It wasn’t too long ago that lawmakers weren’t even allowed to officially use Twitter, let alone any social media site, to communicate with everyone else. The Sunlight Foundation was at the forefront of changing that policy starting in 2007 and culminating in rules changes in 2008. John Wonderlich summed this all up way back when:

In May of 2007, the Sunlight Foundation released the Open House Project report, which included an entire chapter on the issue of Franking Reform.  That chapter, prepared by David All and Paul Blumental, has guided our advocacy and discussions of web use restrictions since then.

Those discussions simmered until earlier this summer, when tensions between Members of the Franking Commission  briefly escalated (the part of the Committee on House Administration that handles Web restrictions).  This summer’s discussion caught some media attention, and unsettled some web-savvy Representatives, and ultimately engaged both parties’ leaders in the House.

The Sunlight Foundation capitalized on the chaos, creating the first twitter-based petition in the site letourcongresstweet.org, which amassed twitter-based signatures, and displayed vigorous support for updated rules from online communities across the political spectrum.

While House officials maneuvered publicly, the Senate passed similar reforms with a bit less fanfare.  As recently as last week, agreement looked unlikely from the House committee, with Roll Call reporting that an attempt at negotiations ended in “an emotionally charged hearing and a breakdown in negotiations.”

That’s why we were suprised and delighted to get word from the Committee on House Administration that a new agreement had been reached.  This measure wasn’t just a slight rewrite, however.  The new guidelines represent an enormous change, one which has new media staff from both parties glowing.

And now we just take for granted that serious policies are announced over Twitter. Personally, I think that is awesome.

Pelosi and Hoyer say final health reform bill will be online for 72 hours before House vote so Members and Americans can review #hcr

This is a great development and another big win for those who have called for the bill to be available to the public for 72 hours throughout this whole process. The Sunlight Foundation has called for the health care bill to be available to the public for 72 hours at each point that versions have come to the floor. In each of these instances the majority has acquiesced and posted each version, from the House bill to the Senate bill, for at least 72 hours prior to consideration. Those of you who have signed the Read the Bill petition and put the pressure on Congress to be this transparent have been vital in ensuring that we have access to this major bill before lawmakers consider, debate and vote on it.

Earlier this week, Ellen explained the importance of the 72 hour requirement:

Think of posting something on line for 3 days as a ‘safety valve’ – a final chance for citizens, media, lawmakers and lobbyists alike to look at the whole package giving everyone one last opportunity to raise questions and concerns about the bill. If readers are in an advocacy mode they have time to  mobilize others in support or opposition, and/or take action in whatever form they see fit.

There is no measure more important to debate in the open than health care, and this is a moment when we all need to be champions for public, online disclosure and engage with our government. With 72 hours, the buck can actually stop with citizens the way our Founders intended. We know that Congress do it because congressional leadership has already done so at other critical points in this debate.

Of course, we still need to make sure that this promise is kept and that won’t be done until the bill has been online for 72 hours and then brought to the floor. Let’s keep it up.

With some serious caveats, all witnesses before congressional committees should be required to disclose contracts, grants and subsidies, both federal and state, that they or their business receive along with any connection, through business or finance, that they have with any sitting member of the committee. Witnesses should also have to disclose whether they are a registered lobbyist and what contributions they have made to committee members. These disclosures should be made in a simple form and then disclosed on the overseeing committee’s Web site prior to the committee hearing.

Grassley’s concern comes from the case of Jonathan Gruber, a well-respected MIT professor and voice on health care reform, who was revealed to have been given a nearly $400,000 from HHS to consult on the President’s health care proposal. This, all the while, acting as a source to many journalists, appearing on television, writing in newspapers and having his research heavily cited in support of the Senate/White House health care bill. Gruber also appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on May 12, 2009 as a witness.

Gruber obviously isn’t the only one who is guilty of this kind of non-disclosure. There are likely numerous cases of executives, employees, lobbyists and experts paraded before congressional committees with some kind of undisclosed conflict of interest or connection.

In one case that went before the Ethics Committee, only to be rejected, Rep. Sam Graves invited his wife’s business associate to testify before a congressional hearing. While Graves ran this invitation by the Ethics Committee beforehand and the Ethics Committee dismissed the charges, this association and potential conflict of interest was not disclosed to the public.

It is likely that some committees already require witnesses to fill out similar forms to the ones I am proposing. These are, however, not made available to the public. Sunlight supports the online posting of all documents submitted to committees as they relate to hearings.

Now, as to the caveats for any policy resembling the one I just described. First, there would obviously be certain whistleblower protections. Second, if a conflict undermined national security, in nearly all cases, this could remain undisclosed. Third, all personal identify information — address, etc… — would not be made publicly available.

Please tell me in the comments how this could be better or rip me apart for proposing this policy.

Forgive my enthusiasm for this new app, but it really is something special and elegant. Forget the fact that the platform will be expanded and new data sources will be added and the app will be expanded. I know that I am channeling my inner Don Draper here when I say that this new app brings me home again, and by home, I mean the Longworth House Office Building.

The Real Time Congress application for iPhone will keep journalists, Hill staffers, bloggers and interested citizens up to date on what is happening in Congress, in real-time. Its ease of use and sleek design promise that end users will continue to go back to the app for unfiltered information on Congress so they can make their own informed decisions on what is happening in the Capitol.

Our goal at the Sunlight Foundation is to change the way that citizens collect information about their government, and then help them to use that information to change the way they interact with their government. This new app shows how powerful new programs and smart phones can accomplish that goal. I’m just a little jealous of my former colleagues on the hill—I kind of wish I had this when I was working over there.

We’re pretty proud of the app and it’s free to you as the user. It is worth noting, however, that it wasn’t free for us to create. It did take weeks of development, and so any contribution toward this application and all the others we hope to create in the future on your behalf is greatly appreciated.

There’s a growing sense that real legislative negotiations should be public.

C-SPAN made such a call last week, and the Society of Professional Journalists has now called for public access to health care negotiations.

These two efforts follow Representative Vern Buchanan’s bill introduced in October, H.Res. 847, a sense of the House resolution calling for open health care deliberations.

While each of these requests has slightly different wording, their goal is similar — taking aim at the real sausage-making — the trading, haggling, prodding, and arguing, the consensus-making, elbow-throwing, backstabbing stuff of legislative power. Were that aspect of Congress to be public, the institution would be change significantly, to say the least. How, though, can it be required to be public?

As we have examined before, requiring formal conference committee proceedings wouldn’t get us there. We’ve also noted that moving away from a publicly deliberative processes (like Conference Committees) is what’s to be expected of a Congress where parties and leadership enjoy concentrated power, and that this transformation will have complex effects on transparency.

How, then, can we require Congress to truly negotiate in public?

Each of these calls has a similar request — Rep. Buchanan’s that “any conference committee or other meetings [regarding healthcare] …be held in full public view and not behind closed doors,” SPJ’s that Congress “reconcile differences between health care bills” by “televis[ing] the negotiations live,” and C-SPAN’s that Congress “open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.”

These each sound good in theory. Imagine, though, that you were responsible for implementing these suggestions. How could they be fulfilled?

If you were the Speaker, or the Chair of a committee, how could you implement this requirement? You could easily set up an event, invite the media, and discuss healthcare. You could even set up an agenda pertaining to reconciling the health care bill. This doesn’t guarantee though, that the real negotiations get broadcast — it doesn’t get us to “all important negotiations,” to use C-SPAN’s formulation. It doesn’t keep Members from reading prepared statements while their staffers negotiate in private, and it doesn’t compel Members not to email or call each other after the meeting ends. It doesn’t keep Members from plotting their own new approaches to health care, or, for that matter, it doesn’t keep Members from plotting in secret to kill the health care bill.

What requirement could?

The only way I can think of to require that the real health care negotiations be public would be to put a ban on certain communications between Members of Congress. You could try to say, for example, that no Member of Congress can communicate with any other about health care, with the exception of a room wired for video. Then, if they wanted to negotiate, Members would have to do so in public. Somewhat similar provisions exist for the FCC, for example, as well as some other legislatures.

Would they be appropriate for Congress?

Any requirement that Members of Congress be forbidden to communicate with each other, under any circumstances, isn’t likely to get far.

Would the ban apply to staffers? Only to verbal communications, or to email and phone calls too?

How would constituents respond to seeing their Member’s speech being restricted?

Wouldn’t allowing speech restrictions on Members possibly empower the Majority party, and weaken the Minority, or at least alter power in an unpredictable, possibly harmful way? In other words, wouldn’t a requirement for public deliberations also apply to private conversations among Minority party Members?

What about the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution?

You can only require something to be public if it’s defined. Bills, laws, executive orders, financial disclosure, earmarks — part of making each of these things public has been to define them. Speech from Members of Congress is among the very hardest of things to define narrowly and well. Inhibiting Congress’s ability to act is dangerous, and inhibiting Congress’s ability to speak freely shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.

As long as: (1) each Chamber of Congress can set (and waive) its own Rules, and (2) as long as a bill becomes law if it’s passed identically in both Chambers, and (3) as long as political parties have a strong electoral interest in moving a legislative agenda, then we can expect legislative wrangling to continue behind closed doors, unless a Congressional speech restriction is enacted.

Calls for legislative transparency aren’t misplaced, and are certainly a rational response as we watch critical and enormous issues being reconciled away from the gaze of public accountability. We should also, however, have a realistic understanding of what it would take to force the real deal-making of Congress into the public eye.

How exactly does this “ping-pong” process work? “Ping-pong,” like the game, envisions the two chambers sending amendments to the bill back and forth with multiple votes on amendments. Ultimately, the chambers will reach agreement and the bill will finally be considered passed.

Below is a quick summation of what that entails (for the full version please read this CRS Report):

1. Choose a legislative vehicle to amend. This could be the House bill or the Senate bill.
2. One chamber – let’s say the House – proposes an amendment or a series of amendments to alter the language of the bill. In the case of the health care bill it is highly likely that this amendment will come in the form of a single amendment in the form of a substitute.
3. The second chamber – the Senate in this example – is then offered three options: agree to the House amendment, agree to the House amendment with further amendment or reject (if there are multiple House amendments the Senate may agree with some and disagree with others).
4. If the Senate agrees to the House amendment to the bill then the bill is considered passed and heads to the President for his signature. If the Senate, however, decides to further amend the House amendments then they can report the bill back to the House with a Senate amendment to the House amendment to the bill. (More on rejection later.)
5. If this happens, the bill and it’s amendments can go to each chamber only once more before the process ends with either a passed, amended bill or the rejection of the process, which doesn’t necessarily mean the bill has been defeated.
6. If rejection happens anywhere along the way, it can come with a motion from the rejecting chamber to do a number of things. These could hypothetically be a motion from the Senate for the House to recede on parts of their amendment(s); a motion to form a conference committee; or a motion to begin the process again.

(There are many more possibilities that can occur along the way. Please read the aforementioned CRS report for those details.)

So… where in this lies the FINAL bill. First and foremost, we consider the first amendment to the bill to be the final version of the bill. This amendment must be made available for at least 72 hours prior to a vote. This means that if the amendment is made available on Monday both chambers could, conceivably, consider and vote in the affirmative on this amendment on Thursday. But, you say, the second considering chamber can offer their own amendment to the first amendment offered. If the amendment offered by the second considering chamber contain major changes to the legislation or the original amendment(s) in the “ping-pong” process it needs to be available for 72 hours before the second considering chamber can consider them. If the amendment offered by the second considering chamber consist solely of minor technical edits, it need not be available.

There is a little bit of Calvinball involved here, but I think that is totally reasonable considering the unpredictability of the process. All that we, the public, need to do is remain vigilant in ensuring that this complicated process remains as transparent as it can be until it reaches an endpoint.

• Last year, the Senate met for 191 days, and the House met for 159 days. Total time in session was 1,420 and 1,247 hours, respectively.
• More than 9,071 measures were introduced, of which 1,444 passed.
• Looking strictly at non-military nominations, 89% (or 3,222) nominations were confirmed; 4% (126) remain unconfirmed; and 0.4% (15) were withdrawn. Overall, the Senate received 24,951 nominations and confirmed 23,051.

Resources:

• Interim resume of congressional activity for the first session of the 111th Congress (2009)
• Senate resumes of congressional activity from 1947 onward (this yearly comparison chart [PDF] is particularly helpful)
• House resumes of congressional activity from 1947 onward
• “Vital Statistics on Congress 2008,” published by the Brookings Institution