An Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, a mental health parity bill, a package of tax break extensions, and tax breaks and relief for victims of natural disasters, specifically Hurricane Ike. These don’t sound like they have any relation to the relief of an financial crisis, but, as of today, they will all play a major role. The new massive bailout package — sorry, “rescue” package — introduced in the Senate includes all of these measures. The inclusion of these measures could help push the underlying Emergency Economic Stabilization Act through Congress or torpedo it by injecting inter-chamber politics into an already tense political situation.

At the heart of the tacked-on legislation is a combination of an AMT patch and tax break extensions for corporations and renewable energy investments. Senate Democrats, most prominently Sen. Max Baucus, believe that the inclusion of these measures will help draw the support of House Republicans who previously voted down Monday’s bailout bill. However, this measure is already drawing the ire of House Democrats, including Blue Dogs and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

The AMT/tax break extension package was previously passed by the Senate, but House leaders, pushed by Hoyer and the Blue Dogs, intended on shelving the proposal due to its failure to abide by pay-as-you-go rules (providing offsetting cuts to go with revenue reductions). The inclusion of the package in the bailout bill will revive the animus between the two Democratic factions. Hoyer has already stated that the inclusion of the “tax extenders” is “controversial” and was included only because “they thought that’s the only way they could get it passed.” Of course, the Blue Dogs, being prominent supporters of the bailout bill, may find themselves in a situation where this compromise is the best they can get.

Seeing as how every vote counts at this point — the bailout only needs 12 votes to pass in the House — the inclusion of the mental health parity legislation previously passed by the House could help sway one or two votes. The chief Republican cosponsor of the bill, Rep. Jim Ramstad, voted against the bailout bill on Monday. Also, one the bill’s seven cosponsors, Rep. Pete Stark, also voted against the bailout. The inclusion of the defining bill of Ramstad’s career, as he retires this year, could be enough to sway this one vote into the “yes” column.

In classic congressional fashion, the Senate has decided to use a crisis piece of legislation as a way to push through a massive package of other priorities forcing an inter-chamber factional battle to come to a head. The inclusion of this controversial legislation could also serve as a remedy to the current failure in the House.

Poison pill or appeasing antidote? We’ll wait and see.

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It looks like the Senate is moving forward today with a new bailout bill, which is available through the Senate Banking committee site.

A mirrored copy, and an embeddable version are both available below.

We’re working on parsing the legislation to get it up on PublicMarkup.org, but until Congress starts publishing bills in XML, parsing it is time consuming. Updates shortly.

Update 12:15 PM: Here’s the embedded version:

Get your own - Open publication

Update, 12:21 PM: Here’s a mirrored version of the PDF.

Update 1:05 PM: Also, for additional info, see the one page and section-by-section analysis posted to the Senate Banking Committee site here.

Update 1:52 PM: For the plan for Senate floor consideration, see the Senate Calendar here.

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The unexpected failure of the bailout proposal has given lawmakers and citizens a second chance to understand the details of this sweeping legislation.

You can join the Sunlight Foundation in renewing our call for all legislation to have at least 72 hours online before a vote. Without this minimal public exposure, how can lawmakers and their staff really understand legislation? What hope do citizens have of being truly represented if they can only read bills shortly before passage (or failure, as the case may be)?

We have refined our petition in light of this new opportunity for mindful consideration of the bailout legislation. To sign up, tweet to your friends, or read more details, check out our petition, or read our press release.

Congress responds to public pressure, and posting bills before votes is just common sense. Tell Congress to Read the Bill First! Sign our petition, and check out the latest versions of the bill at PublicMarkup.org.

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Today, the Sunlight Foundation is calling on Congress to exercise restraint, and give Members and the public sufficient time to read and respond to the proposed bailout legislation.

Citizens, irrespective of party identity, are deeply skeptical at the proposal.  If any legislation should be considered publicly, and carefully, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 should be considered with level heads and in full public view.

We’re happy to see Congress recognizing the public’s interest in this legislation, posting the text of the agreement as soon as a consensus plan was developed among congressional leadership.  Congress should take the next logical step, and hold off on floor consideration until a full 72 hours has elapsed after posting the bill.

As our just issued press release says:

But, before the bailout proposal is considered by lawmakers, it must undergo an even more important test: evaluation and assessment by Americans. That’s why we are calling on citizens to sign a petition to urge Congress to wait 72 hours between when the bill was first posted online and the actual vote. We believe all legislation should posted online for at least three days before a vote to give lawmakers and citizens sufficient time to review and debate it, and this bill is no exception. This isn’t a bill to rename a few courthouses; this bill is Congress’s biggest intervention in the economy in decades. This important legislation deserves more time for public scrutiny.

Sign the petition here, and tell Congress to read the bill first!

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(this message is from a post I sent to the Open House Project google group, part of an exchange you can read here.)

The name “readthebill” does seem like an exhortation– Sit! Stay! Roll over! Readthebill!…

But, I think it would be a mistake to conflate the 72 Hour Rule with “members reading bills”, for a few reasons.

First, there’s a big difference between recommending that Members do anything (nearly impossible task) and making it possible that they or their staff do it.  Obscurantism shouldn’t be arrived at through rapid legislative maneuvering, or by contrived complexity, as Clay and Chris note.

Now, that isn’t to say that Members and staff are going to start reading all bills.  I actually think it’s important that a Members can vote ignorantly if they’d like to; you can’t mandate competence to a legislative body that’s supposed to be independent.

Indeed, the current Rules of the House provide that each bill is read three times, in Rule XVI, 8:

This requirement is routinely dispensed with without objection — objection to dispensing with the readings is even used as a dilatory tactic.  This is just as well, because a clerk reading legislative language to an empty floor doesn’t really add much.

Finally, I’d like to raise the public component to the 72 hour rule.

Posting legislation online 72 hours before votes is about more than member and staff consideration.  This is yet another case where the needs of congressional staff and public citizens overlap (a point Rob Pierson makes constantly).  “Representing” a district shouldn’t be a metaphor, it should be more of a gerund.  When a member “represents”, they shouldn’t just represent in the same way a roadsign represents an upcoming turn.  Representation necessarily involves interaction.

Maybe I’m wandering back into the world of saying what members should do, so let me walk that back a bit.  If legislation isn’t posted online before consideration, then an interactive style of representation is impossible.  Constituents are necessarily shut out of that aspect of the legislative process without some lag between posting a final version and its floor consideration.

Our conception of public involvement in legislation suffers from a weird mythology, where stories like Mr. Smith goes to Washington or the ladybug story, where some exceptional circumstances lead to (gasp!) the impossible puncturing of the legislative bubble, proving that we can all make a difference if we just try.

I’m as susceptible to public involvement glurge as much as the next person (I think the ladybug story is excellent), but this narrative about miraculous public engagement overshadows what’s really going on: the public has an immense and largely untapped capacity to engage in the substance of legislation.  Policy already flows out of lobbyists, legislative support agencies, “urgent issues” sometimes fomented by the popular media, trade groups, and scientific research.  These communities, to various degrees, have developed institutional pathways leading from need to legislative action.

The 72 hour rule is about making it possible for the dispersed expertise, whether well connected to the instituions of Congress or not, to react to legislation before floor consideration, and to allow representatives to more fully represent, insofar as they’re moved to.

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