Discharge H. Res. 554

With the health care debate raging, now is the time for Congress to implement the rules change being pushed by the good people at the Sunlight Foundation via ReadtheBill.org

H. Res. 554 was reported to committee on June 17th, with no action since. Here's what the Resolution does:

Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation
and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours
before consideration by the House, and for other purposes.

As crucial as it is that we pass health care reform, it is equally crucial that we do it right. And even if it's employed by the Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans as a delay tactic, a discharge petition for H. Res 554 may be in order.

The discharge petition would get the bill out of the rules committee and on to the floor for a vote. I'd fully support Representative Scott Garrett if they got the petition voted on and passed, because that's how important it is that the health bill is done right and in full view of the public.

It's been clear for some time when bills are rushed is when lobbyist and special interest provisions are inserted. While the perfect can't be the enemy of the good, if we're not careful, the largest reform in many of our lifetimes could turn into something much less than good.

Although this bill seems to reverse many examples of recent history of rushed bills gone wrong (ex. Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Donut Hole), when bills come out of committee without review there's no way to guess what other things may have been inserted.

Anyone who honestly cares about making sure this reform is done right should be supporting H. Res 554. It would provide the confidence going forward, or an opportunity see issues that need amending, or the silver bullet if it deserves to fail.

Whether for or against the bill, we need to know what's in the bill.

Read the Bill

I realized it's been a while since I last wrote, however a transparency bill has been introduced recently that I hope our Representative Scott Garrett and the rest of the delegation from New Jersey will get behind: H. Res. 554.

Here's the purpose of the bill:

Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours before consideration by the House, and for other purposes.

Often is the case that you will see Garrett and other members of the House lament the short amount of time available to review a bill, yet the Resolution only has 1 primary and 4 co-sponsors.

Congress passes legislation almost every day that no one has read, except the staffers who wrote it and the lobbyists who helped them. We've seen it with everything from spending bills to the Patriot Act to the stimulus package. Often complained about by members, neither party's leadership seem willing to embrace the 72 hour practice.

The good people at the Sunlight Foundation are leading the charge to change this with ReadTheBill.org, which supports H. Res. 554. Everyone should be on board with this, because the idea of Congress enacting law without actually reading what they're voting on should be troubling to us all.

Happy Sunshine Week

For those that hadn't heard, this is Sunshine Week. For those that are unfamiliar, here's the description from the website:

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.

There's a lot of useful information gathered by government at all levels which could, and likely would, help shape our direction forward on a number of issues. Unfortunately, much of this information is either not available or difficult to access and compile.

As an example, our state recently received high marks for making things available on-line. However, anyone who wants to compile how much an individual receiving a no-bid contract has donated to the powers that be must compile it themselves. Hardly encouraging for citizen participation.

There's a long way to go for us to get all the information out there that we the people are entitled to. As I mentioned earlier, Bloomberg News has had to sue the Fed to find out where all of our bailout money is going. Under enormous pressure, AIG, disclosed who received some of their bailout money today after people went crazy they were giving out an estimated $450 million in bonuses to the very people who ran the company into the ground. Without public pressure, they may never have yielded.

This week promises to showcase the unveiling of several new initiatives and pieces of legislation nationwide aimed at providing we the people with our information. Should be interesting to see what comes out of it, but a good government is a transparent government.

Garrett: Audit the Fed

Representative Scott Garrett has joined Representative Ron Paul and 19 other Representatives in co-sponsoring legislation to audit the Federal Reserve and it's branches. With $11.7 trillion in lending since the the financial crisis began, Garrett wants some transparency:

"I would assume that information would be shared by the Fed and the New York Fed," said U.S. Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican. "At some point, the demand for transparency is paramount to any demand that they have for secrecy."

Basically, the legislation Garrett is backing gives the government the ability to audit the Fed. While we have the authority to do so, there are so many exceptions and ways for the Fed to get out of an audit, the power is useless. For instance, the Fed must agree to the audit. Paul's legislation that Garrett signed on to eliminates the exceptions.

Here are some of the other exceptions, from the US Code:

(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;

(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations;

(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or

(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)-(3) of this subsection.

Yep, that's basically everything the Fed does being listed as off-limits for Congressional oversight. Garrett's joined the effort to change that, and should be applauded.

In addition to Garrett's efforts, Bloomberg (news, not the Mayor) is suing the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act to get the information we're entitled to.

At some point, seeing how this massive amount of money is being spent is going to happen. The Fed existed heading into the Great Depression, and we need more than their word that they're not making the same mistakes now that they made then. Transparency is key to preventing us from repeating the mistakes of the past, to learn from history. It's important that both the lawsuit and the legislation succeed.

Garrett Discloses Earmarks

Due to my recent trip to Transparency Camp, and the work week since, I did not see that Representative Scott Garrett once again entered his earmarks into the Congressional Record. He declared what he had received from the pork stuffed Omnibus Bill.

Garrett's share of the $7.7 billion in earmarks: 0.052%

Garrett's been pretty good about submitting these disclosures, and despite a number of votes against transparency and accountability, he's transparent about this.

My Weekend @ Transparency Camp

Those that read regularly know how important I think transparency is when it comes to making our government work the way it’s supposed to. I was fortunate this weekend to go to an event called Transparency Camp, where people from all over the nation with the same basic belief came together to figure out where we are and where we need to go.

At the event, I was able to meet all of the people responsible for the sites I use all the time when talking about Representative Scott Garrett (OpenSecrets.org, Tax Payers for Common Sense, Govtrack.us); as well as some I hadn't fully explored (FollowTheMoney.org, OpenCongress.org, Sunshine Week). It was truly one of those amazing life experiences.

What I took away from the convention was a better understanding of how all of these sites worked, internal government issues getting in the way, as well as what to look forward to (there’s a doozey dropping in a few weeks) and a renewed sense of purpose.

A few projects of particular interest to are:

• Readthebill.org: Requesting bills to be posted 72 hours before voting (sign the petition).
• 50 State Project by Sunlight Labs: Every bill, every vote, every state.
• Show Us the Data: Joint effort between the Open The Government and the Center for Democracy and Technology to unlock government data we should have.

One thing that was said in a number of seminars I attended was that bloggers hadn’t earned the general public’s trust at this point, largely because there was so much garbage out there. This is true, and as a community we have to raise our game.

With newspapers dying, and television becoming more of a reactionary as opposed to pro-active force, we’re what’s going to be left. In that sense, I really hope those of you that do blog will take advantage of Sunshine Week, to learn about the tools they have available.


At the end of the day it’s our government, our money they're spending, and our data that could save lives. It was an amazing weekend, and I hope if nothing else, my attendance will make this a more useful and accurate source of information than folks have already told me it is.