In May, the Congress passed the 2008 Farm Bill, which regulates various food, nutrition, and apparently biofuel issues. Tufts food policy professor Parke Wilde writes on his blog today:
The 629-page text (.pdf) of the 2008 Farm Bill is so complex and unreadable that the U.S. food policy community has been on the edge of our seats waiting for the USDA/ERS side-by-side comparison unveiled today.
The ERS side-by-side tool <http://www.ers.usda.gov/FarmBill/2008/> compares the new Farm Bill with current law, title by title, so we can finally begin to understand what the law really means.
ERS is the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Their side-by-side webpage, which I think was just published this week, shows the provisions of the previous and the current bill side-by-side. (It’s not a comparison of the bill text, but of summaries of the provisions.)
This is interesting on a number of accounts. First, the fact that it is the USDA making this comparison suggests that everyone agrees that the bill itself is effectively incomprehensible even to professionals and scholars on account of its size and summarizing it is costly enough that only the government would do it, taking three months to prepare.
Second, if this is what was needed to understand the Farm Bill, was it passed without anyone understanding it?
Third- This comparison was made by and for professionals and scholars, not by tech geeks. Why aren’t we talking to them?
The ERS tool comes complete with a seemingly unintentionally hilarious intro video <http://www.ers.usda.gov/FarmBill/2008/video/FarmBillVideo.htm> — overly dramatic with background music fit for the Miss Universe competition. (Wilde likened it to “a documentary by Kenneth Burns or an account of a manned mission to the moon”.)
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
Readable Laws is a wiki for open bill analysis. From a glance of the site,
it's not very active with only a few bills under consideration. Also, I had
trouble with the "Recent Changes" page, as it didn't produce any results.
Nevertheless it is in my "Citizen Volunteer Opportunities" list in the
lefthand column of All Things Reform www.bit.ly/dw .
Also, to my delight www.ReadtheBill.org is active again, as it is now under
the management of the Sunlight Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more
stuff added as time goes on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal
Government Ethics Orgs." feeds list in the lefthand column.
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> (Also on the blog:)
> In May, the Congress passed the 2008 Farm Bill, which regulates various
> food, nutrition, and apparently biofuel issues. Tufts food policy
> professor Parke Wilde writes on his blog today:
> The 629-page text (.pdf) of the 2008 Farm Bill is so complex and
> unreadable that the U.S. food policy community has been on the edge of
> our seats waiting for the USDA/ERS side-by-side comparison unveiled today.
> The ERS side-by-side tool <http://www.ers.usda.gov/FarmBill/2008/>
> compares the new Farm Bill with current law, title by title, so we can
> finally begin to understand what the law really means.
> ERS is the USDA's Economic Research Service. Their side-by-side webpage,
> which I think was just published this week, shows the provisions of the
> previous and the current bill side-by-side. (It's not a comparison of
> the bill text, but of summaries of the provisions.)
> This is interesting on a number of accounts. First, the fact that it is
> the USDA making this comparison suggests that everyone agrees that the
> bill itself is effectively incomprehensible even to professionals and
> scholars on account of its size and summarizing it is costly enough that
> only the government would do it, taking three months to prepare.
> Second, if this is what was needed to understand the Farm Bill, was it
> passed without anyone understanding it?
> Third- This comparison was made by and for professionals and scholars,
> not by tech geeks. Why aren't we talking to them?
> The ERS tool comes complete with a seemingly unintentionally hilarious
> intro video
> <http://www.ers.usda.gov/FarmBill/2008/video/FarmBillVideo.htm> — overly
> dramatic with background music fit for the Miss Universe competition.
> (Wilde likened it to "a documentary by Kenneth Burns or an account of a
> manned mission to the moon".)
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
-- "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou
David Weller wrote: > Also, to my delight www.ReadtheBill.org <http://www.ReadtheBill.org> is > active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight > Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time goes > on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs." > feeds list in the lefthand column.
To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces have (often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee deliberations.
Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely? sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a heads-up. So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there.
But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour rule" I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues.
So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by the new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on:
* How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on 600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill itself? How much of reading is done by staff and not by the Members themselves? And if they haven't read it, how do they decide how to vote (besides the obvious of being corralled by the whip)?
* What is the average duration that the components of a bill are available to read by Members or the public before a vote? For instance, you might write: For bill X, 80% of the sections in the bill went back 6 months to the measure as introduced, 10% of the sections in the bill went back 1 month to amendments introduced on the floor, and 10% of the sections came from amendments introduced just minutes before the vote. And then looking across bills, say, 40% of bills voted on had more than 10% of their sections established only within hours of the final vote.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's Congressman's Voting Decisions. If you did a citation search on that book, you'd probably be able to get the whole literature on this subject with relatively little effort. The basic answer is that members of Congress and their staffs read (or understand) relatively little of the legislation they vote upon. Instead, they rely on people whom they trust, such as party leaders, lobbyists, caucus leaders, and others with a similar ideological disposition, for cues as to how to vote.
On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab; Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped out when bills are posted to Thomas.
-----Original Message-----
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM
To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
David Weller wrote:
> Also, to my delight www.ReadtheBill.org <http://www.ReadtheBill.org> is
> active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight
> Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time goes
> on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs."
> feeds list in the lefthand column.
To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a
slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour
rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is
that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form
of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces have
(often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed
amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee
deliberations.
Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses
the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely?
sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a heads-up.
So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there.
But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour rule"
I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues.
So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by the
new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on:
* How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read
bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on
600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went
into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill
itself? How much of reading is done by staff and not by the Members
themselves? And if they haven't read it, how do they decide how to vote
(besides the obvious of being corralled by the whip)?
* What is the average duration that the components of a bill are
available to read by Members or the public before a vote? For instance,
you might write: For bill X, 80% of the sections in the bill went back 6
months to the measure as introduced, 10% of the sections in the bill
went back 1 month to amendments introduced on the floor, and 10% of the
sections came from amendments introduced just minutes before the vote.
And then looking across bills, say, 40% of bills voted on had more than
10% of their sections established only within hours of the final vote.
Leg Counsel always drafts the bill in electronic flormat but what ends up happening is that conference committee staff make handwritten changes to a printed version of the bill and / or sign off on agreements with written annotations in the margins. Agreements could likely be done with some sort of digital signature and changes could be made by leg counsel.
What is more important though is that any rule on bills having to lay over for a certain period of time is that the bills be searchable. If they're in a searchable format we can theoretivally have leg counsel run a red line on the differimg versions.
Rules like this could help us get to what is the real problem which is that the drafters of a lot of these bills is that they know that they're like fish - the longer they sit out the more they stink. What they do is they toss the bills out up against a recess and force members to vote for the bill or not get to go back home. If bills could not be offered within some period before a recess or adjournment was to occur - and they had to be searchable - you might see a lot of this mischief stop.
As a practical matter searchability - and an associated red line - would help a lot. If we can see what parts of the bill moved we'd have a better idea of what happened.
I would also encourage you to look at how the conference process has eroded and made the process increasingly opaque. The use of "substitutes" is problematic becuase it gives conferees the latitute to drop a lot of new matter in in conference which wasn't really what the conference was supposed to be about. It also gives a select few (comm chairs and maybe some conferees) the ability to control the process. When all there is is a substitute the first time you ever see anything is when the substitute comes out. By then things are cooked.
Additionally the use of amendments between the houses is corrosive. The Senate has strong rules governing the conference process - they aren't perfect but they're better than nothing. The recent use of messages betweeen the houses and filling the tree by the leader effectively guts the conference process. It allows the leadership to conference the bill without any of the conference restrictions (scope, airdrops, etc) and then throw it on the Senate floor and block amendments and force members to vote on it.
Anyway just some thoughts. Hope they're helpful
Tom
________________________________
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com Sent: Sun Aug 24 10:11:02 2008
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
Josh,
There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon’s Congressman’s Voting Decisions. If you did a citation search on that book, you’d probably be able to get the whole literature on this subject with relatively little effort. The basic answer is that members of Congress and their staffs read (or understand) relatively little of the legislation they vote upon. Instead, they rely on people whom they trust, such as party leaders, lobbyists, caucus leaders, and others with a similar ideological disposition, for cues as to how to vote.
On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft Word has much of this type of functionality under its “reviewing” tab; Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped out when bills are posted to Thomas.
-----Original Message-----
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM
To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
David Weller wrote:
> Also, to my delight www.ReadtheBill.org <http://www.ReadtheBill.org> is
> active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight
> Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time goes
> on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs."
> feeds list in the lefthand column.
To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a
slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour
rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is
that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form
of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces have
(often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed
amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee
deliberations.
Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses
the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely?
sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a heads-up.
So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there.
But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour rule"
I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues.
So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by the
new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on:
* How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read
bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on
600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went
into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill
itself? How much of reading is done by staff and not by the Members
themselves? And if they haven't read it, how do they decide how to vote
(besides the obvious of being corralled by the whip)?
* What is the average duration that the components of a bill are
available to read by Members or the public before a vote? For instance,
you might write: For bill X, 80% of the sections in the bill went back 6
months to the measure as introduced, 10% of the sections in the bill
went back 1 month to amendments introduced on the floor, and 10% of the
sections came from amendments introduced just minutes before the vote.
And then looking across bills, say, 40% of bills voted on had more than
10% of their sections established only within hours of the final vote.
J.H. Snider wrote:
> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of > Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon’s /Congressman’s > Voting Decisions/.
Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a > date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft > Word has much of this type of functionality under its “reviewing” tab; > Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative > counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare > new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped > out when bills are posted to Thomas.
GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported, engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate points internally but not published? That would be something like after amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before a vote on the conference report.
Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes, rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which Rob posted about [2].
So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to get their support in:
1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
(XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
for this).)
2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However,
what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments
are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the
more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text,
rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
for staters!)
The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
ideas are welcome.
In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the
same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an
entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this
legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
Lisa Rosenberg
Government Affairs Consultant
The Sunlight Foundation
On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> J.H. Snider wrote:
> > There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of
> > Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon’s /Congressman’s
> > Voting Decisions/.
> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library
> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already
> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> > On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a
> > date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft
> > Word has much of this type of functionality under its “reviewing” tab;
> > Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative
> > counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare
> > new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped
> > out when bills are posted to Thomas.
> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported,
> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full
> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate
> points internally but not published? That would be something like after
> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before
> a vote on the conference report.
> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding
> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It
> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes,
> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at
> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and
> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of
> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which
> Rob posted about [2].
> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email
> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to
> get their support in:
> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
> for this).)
> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However,
> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments
> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the
> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text,
> rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)- Hide quoted text -
I'm not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead to as much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this listserv seem to expect. For example, if amendments and bills are bundled into omnibus legislation, then congressional roll call votes become relatively uninformative. What we are seeing is an information arms race between incumbent legislators and the public. As the level of amendment/bill transparency increases, the accountability of amendment/bill information has decreased. So today we get lots of roll call votes on trivial issues, such as uncontroversial resolutions, and very few roll call votes on the really important issues before Congress. In my recent working paper for Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, I argue that the current move to increase transparency must be supplemented with an effort to fundamentally rethink legislative procedure so that this information arms race is short circuited. For example, the current push for greater transparency, such as readthebill.org's legislative agenda, must be complemented by a greater push for the introduction of First Amendment values into legislative procedure.
-----Original Message-----
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:37 AM
To: Open House Project
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
for staters!)
The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
ideas are welcome.
In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the
same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an
entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this
legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
Lisa Rosenberg
Government Affairs Consultant
The Sunlight Foundation
On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> J.H. Snider wrote:
> > There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of
> > Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's
> > Voting Decisions/.
> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library
> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already
> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> > On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a
> > date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft
> > Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab;
> > Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative
> > counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare
> > new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped
> > out when bills are posted to Thomas.
> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported,
> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full
> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate
> points internally but not published? That would be something like after
> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before
> a vote on the conference report.
> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding
> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It
> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes,
> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at
> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and
> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of
> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which
> Rob posted about [2].
> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email
> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to
> get their support in:
> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
> for this).)
> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However,
> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments
> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the
> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text,
How would you reconcile your solution -- the solution to the "arms race" between legislators and the public accountability mechanisms -- to the separation of powers or the speech or debate clause? If pushes for data availability are met with a shifting locus of legislative clout (bundling in omnibus bills, etc), as can be expected, what solution wouldn't hinder an institution that is already on the weak end of its range? I'm concerned about legislative prerogative.
My question, though, is this: how can disclosure requirements that *aren't*House or Senate Rules-based place restrictions on Congress *without* affecting the independence of the body? Doesn't any "law of general applicability" (if I'm getting the terms right), if applied to Congress separately, introduce inter-branch concerns? Even the Ethics in Government Act, with its financial disclosure requirements, is applied to Congress through a convoluted agreement between the House and Senate Rules and the US Code, each of which sort of claiming primacy in their respective domains, with the House Rules excerpting the Code.
That the legal context surrounding disclosure requirements made outside a simple Rules regime is convoluted is probably not a surprise in a common law system, but I do think the lack of clarity in this realm makes it all the more difficult to propose reforms outside the context of rules requirements.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:28 PM, J.H. Snider <jhsni...@jhsnider.net> wrote: > I'm not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead to > as much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this listserv seem > to expect. For example, if amendments and bills are bundled into omnibus > legislation, then congressional roll call votes become relatively > uninformative. What we are seeing is an information arms race between > incumbent legislators and the public. As the level of amendment/bill > transparency increases, the accountability of amendment/bill information has > decreased. So today we get lots of roll call votes on trivial issues, such > as uncontroversial resolutions, and very few roll call votes on the really > important issues before Congress. In my recent working paper for Harvard's > Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, I argue that > the current move to increase transparency must be supplemented with an > effort to fundamentally rethink legislative procedure so that this > information arms race is short circuited. For example, the current push for > greater transparency, such as readthebill.org's legislative agenda, must > be complemented by a greater push for the introduction of First Amendment > values into legislative procedure.
> -----Original Message----- > From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto: > openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of > Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com > Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:37 AM > To: Open House Project > Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of > course)
> As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
> input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
> for staters!)
> The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
> related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
> meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
> any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
> or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
> through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
> or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
> process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
> process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
> input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
> possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
> ideas are welcome.
> In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
> transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
> pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
> Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
> voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
> address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
> hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the
> same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an
> entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this
> legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
> Lisa Rosenberg
> Government Affairs Consultant
> The Sunlight Foundation
> On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> > J.H. Snider wrote:
> > > There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of
> > > Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's
> > > Voting Decisions/.
> > Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library
> > today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already
> > been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> > > On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a
> > > date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft
> > > Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab;
> > > Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative
> > > counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare
> > > new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is > stripped
> > > out when bills are posted to Thomas.
> > GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported,
> > engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full
> > text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate
> > points internally but not published? That would be something like after
> > amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before
> > a vote on the conference report.
> > Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding
> > 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It
> > would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes,
> > rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at
> > $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and
> > getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of
> > mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which
> > Rob posted about [2].
> > So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email
> > that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to
> > get their support in:
> > 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
> > that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
> > pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
> > (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
> > to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
> > XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
> > only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
> > for this).)
> > 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
> > public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However,
> > what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments
> > are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the
> > more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text,
> > rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
If legislative procedure is to be brought into the information age (so that legislative procedure actually generates democratically useful information), it will have to be instituted the way all legislative procedure has been instituted: through the resolutions of Congress. Thus, I see no separations of power issue, including conflict with the Constitution's speech or debate clause.
It is true that incumbent members of Congress have a blatant conflict of interest in instituting certain types of democratically desirable legislative procedures. But I would not argue that the executive or judicial branch should thus be given the power to do what Congress will not do for itself. I do hope that one day a citizens assembly will have an important role to play in dealing with issues where incumbent members of Congress have a blatant conflict of interest. But I conceive of a citizens assembly at the Federal level as only a type of congressional committee, with final authority still given to duly elected members of Congress.
Less ideally but more practically, I hope that one day a minority party will find it in its interest create the type of vigorous deliberative forum ("shadow legislature") that information technology now makes eminently feasible. Once this legislative genie was out of the bottle-like instituting Thomas or televising floor coverage-I believe it would be hard to place it back in.
In sum, I am optimistic that the information arms race problem can be mitigated without violating the Constitution.
--Jim Snider
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Wonderlich Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 5:27 PM To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
How would you reconcile your solution -- the solution to the "arms race" between legislators and the public accountability mechanisms -- to the separation of powers or the speech or debate clause? If pushes for data availability are met with a shifting locus of legislative clout (bundling in omnibus bills, etc), as can be expected, what solution wouldn't hinder an institution that is already on the weak end of its range? I'm concerned about legislative prerogative.
To see the intricacies of the balance between what can be subpoena'd, and what falls under speech or debate protection, see Michael Stern's recent blog <http://www.d1040331.dotsterhost.com/applications/serendipity/index.ph... hives/66-The-Prosecutions-Assault-on-Senator-Stevens-Legislative-Privilege. h tml#extended> post on Senator Stevens' motion in limine to render some evidence inadmissable via the speech or debate clause. (the <http://www.d1040331.dotsterhost.com/applications/serendipity/index.ph... hives/2008/08/25.html> whole series is excellent, if more detailed than I can fully grasp.)
My question, though, is this: how can disclosure requirements that aren't House or Senate Rules-based place restrictions on Congress without affecting the independence of the body? Doesn't any "law of general applicability" (if I'm getting the terms right), if applied to Congress separately, introduce inter-branch concerns? Even the Ethics in Government Act, with its financial disclosure requirements, is applied to Congress through a convoluted agreement between the House and Senate Rules and the US Code, each of which sort of claiming primacy in their respective domains, with the House Rules excerpting the Code.
That the legal context surrounding disclosure requirements made outside a simple Rules regime is convoluted is probably not a surprise in a common law system, but I do think the lack of clarity in this realm makes it all the more difficult to propose reforms outside the context of rules requirements.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:28 PM, J.H. Snider <jhsni...@jhsnider.net> wrote:
I'm not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead to as much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this listserv seem to expect. For example, if amendments and bills are bundled into omnibus legislation, then congressional roll call votes become relatively uninformative. What we are seeing is an information arms race between incumbent legislators and the public. As the level of amendment/bill transparency increases, the accountability of amendment/bill information has decreased. So today we get lots of roll call votes on trivial issues, such as uncontroversial resolutions, and very few roll call votes on the really important issues before Congress. In my recent working paper for Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, I argue that the current move to increase transparency must be supplemented with an effort to fundamentally rethink legislative procedure so that this information arms race is short circuited. For example, the current push for greater transparency, such as readthebill.org's legislative agenda, must be complemented by a greater push for the introduction of First Amendment values into legislative procedure.
[mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:37 AM To: Open House Project Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
for staters!)
The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
ideas are welcome.
In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the
same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an
entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this
legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
Lisa Rosenberg
Government Affairs Consultant
The Sunlight Foundation
On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> J.H. Snider wrote:
> > There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of
> > Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's
> > Voting Decisions/.
> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library
> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already
> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> > On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a
> > date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft
> > Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab;
> > Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative
> > counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare
> > new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped
> > out when bills are posted to Thomas.
> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported,
> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full
> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate
> points internally but not published? That would be something like after
> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before
> a vote on the conference report.
> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding
> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It
> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes,
> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at
> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and
> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of
> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which
> Rob posted about [2].
> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email
> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to
> get their support in:
> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
> for this).)
> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
Thanks, that's helpful, and I'm afraid my last email may have been a bit
unclear.
I think we're on the same page, since you write that disclosure requirements
"will have to be instituted...through the resolutions of Congress."
I'm wondering about what FOIA-like provisions could possibly be applied to
Congress. First, I'm suggesting that any such provision would have to be
self-imposed, through House and Senate Rules, since laws "of general
applicability" would generate some Speech or Debate issues, and also bring
up other separation of powers issues.
I'm also wondering what FOIA-like provisions, if instituted through
self-imposed rules changes, could look like. Most of the things I'm
imagining would become a political hassle, stifling debate and research from
staff engaging in good faith communications.
If, by FOIA-like provisions, you mean generally enhancing disclosure
requirements and procedures, by say mandating that THOMAS generate by-Member
searchable roll call votes, or requiring THOMAS to provide links to
individual lines of bills (Josh appears to have just set this up on
GovTrack, which I'm quite excited about, see
here<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hc110-362&version=i...>),
then I'm right with you.
I do, however, have a hard time imagining a request-based system (like FOIA)
for any kind of Congressional information that doesn't become a minefield of
unintended consequences. The closest parallels I can think of are GAO
reports, CRS reports, and Ethics investigations, all subject to carefully
prioritized consideration only by the request of a Member, and all carefully
designed to avoid politicization, abuse, and separation of powers issues.
I'd also like to point out that these support mechanisms are generally
overloaded, with GAO currently hovering around half its previous FTE levels,
despite a workload increase and compelling evidence that spending on GAO
yields a very high return on investment (by dispelling waste and abuse).
They're also not fulfilling their statutory
requirements,<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/12/17/the-gaos-unheeded-mandate/>as
set by the Ethics in Government Act.
So I guess I'm asking, precisely, whether there are additional disclosure
enhancements for Congress that fall outside rules and administrative process
reforms, aside from funding and supporting the legislative support agencies
that generate public congressional information.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:58 PM, J.H. Snider <sni...@isolon.org> wrote:
> If legislative procedure is to be brought into the information age (so
> that legislative procedure actually generates democratically useful
> information), it will have to be instituted the way all legislative
> procedure has been instituted: through the resolutions of Congress. Thus, I
> see no separations of power issue, including conflict with the
> Constitution's speech or debate clause.
> It is true that incumbent members of Congress have a blatant conflict of
> interest in instituting certain types of democratically desirable
> legislative procedures. But I would not argue that the executive or
> judicial branch should thus be given the power to do what Congress will not
> do for itself. I do hope that one day a citizens assembly will have an
> important role to play in dealing with issues where incumbent members of
> Congress have a blatant conflict of interest. But I conceive of a citizens
> assembly at the Federal level as only a type of congressional committee,
> with final authority still given to duly elected members of Congress.
> Less ideally but more practically, I hope that one day a minority party
> will find it in its interest create the type of vigorous deliberative forum
> ("shadow legislature") that information technology now makes eminently
> feasible. Once this legislative genie was out of the bottle—like
> instituting Thomas or televising floor coverage—I believe it would be hard
> to place it back in.
> In sum, I am optimistic that the information arms race problem can be
> mitigated without violating the Constitution.
> --Jim Snider
> *From:* openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *John Wonderlich
> *Sent:* Monday, August 25, 2008 5:27 PM
> *To:* openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact,
> of course)
> How would you reconcile your solution -- the solution to the "arms race"
> between legislators and the public accountability mechanisms -- to the
> separation of powers or the speech or debate clause? If pushes for data
> availability are met with a shifting locus of legislative clout (bundling in
> omnibus bills, etc), as can be expected, what solution wouldn't hinder an
> institution that is already on the weak end of its range? I'm concerned
> about legislative prerogative.
> My question, though, is this: how can disclosure requirements that *aren't
> * House or Senate Rules-based place restrictions on Congress *without*affecting the independence of the body? Doesn't any "law of general
> applicability" (if I'm getting the terms right), if applied to Congress
> separately, introduce inter-branch concerns? Even the Ethics in Government
> Act, with its financial disclosure requirements, is applied to Congress
> through a convoluted agreement between the House and Senate Rules and the US
> Code, each of which sort of claiming primacy in their respective domains,
> with the House Rules excerpting the Code.
> That the legal context surrounding disclosure requirements made outside a
> simple Rules regime is convoluted is probably not a surprise in a common law
> system, but I do think the lack of clarity in this realm makes it all the
> more difficult to propose reforms outside the context of rules requirements.
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:28 PM, J.H. Snider <jhsni...@jhsnider.net>
> wrote:
> I'm not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead to as
> much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this listserv seem to
> expect. For example, if amendments and bills are bundled into omnibus
> legislation, then congressional roll call votes become relatively
> uninformative. What we are seeing is an information arms race between
> incumbent legislators and the public. As the level of amendment/bill
> transparency increases, the accountability of amendment/bill information has
> decreased. So today we get lots of roll call votes on trivial issues, such
> as uncontroversial resolutions, and very few roll call votes on the really
> important issues before Congress. In my recent working paper for Harvard's
> Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, I argue that
> the current move to increase transparency must be supplemented with an
> effort to fundamentally rethink legislative procedure so that this
> information arms race is short circuited. For example, the current push for
> greater transparency, such as readthebill.org's legislative agenda, must
> be complemented by a greater push for the introduction of First Amendment
> values into legislative procedure.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
> Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 10:37 AM
> To: Open House Project
> Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of
> course)
> As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
> input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
> for staters!)
> The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
> related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
> meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
> any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
> or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
> through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
> or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
> process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
> process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
> input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
> possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
> ideas are welcome.
> In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
> transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
> pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
> Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
> voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
> address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
FOIA (especially the principles behind Electronic FOIA) has some appealing elements as a model for congressional transparency. However, FOIA-like rules won't solve the information arms race problem, and they are not what I'm talking about when I refer to improved legislative procedure. The problem is: garbage in, garbage out. FOIA-like rules are only as good as the public records that are already generated by the legislative process. If all FOIA-like rules make available is information garbage, then its appeal is undercut. For example, what good are roll call votes by legislator if the roll call votes generated by legislative procedure are crap? (This is phrased too strongly in order to clearly make a point.)
Your closing paragraph asks a good question to which I don't have a very good answer. As a practical matter, I don't see how there could be rules and administrative process reforms that fall outside the jurisdiction of Congress. However, the development of the "administrative state" in the early 20th century involved a massive delegation of congressional authority to quasi-independent entities. As long as Congress in some sense retains ultimate control of these law/rule making agencies, they don't violate the Constitution.
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Wonderlich
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 12:37 AM
To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
Thanks, that's helpful, and I'm afraid my last email may have been a bit unclear.
I think we're on the same page, since you write that disclosure requirements "will have to be instituted...through the resolutions of Congress."
I'm wondering about what FOIA-like provisions could possibly be applied to Congress. First, I'm suggesting that any such provision would have to be self-imposed, through House and Senate Rules, since laws "of general applicability" would generate some Speech or Debate issues, and also bring up other separation of powers issues.
I'm also wondering what FOIA-like provisions, if instituted through self-imposed rules changes, could look like. Most of the things I'm imagining would become a political hassle, stifling debate and research from staff engaging in good faith communications.
If, by FOIA-like provisions, you mean generally enhancing disclosure requirements and procedures, by say mandating that THOMAS generate by-Member searchable roll call votes, or requiring THOMAS to provide links to individual lines of bills (Josh appears to have just set this up on GovTrack, which I'm quite excited about, see here<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hc110-362&version=i...>), then I'm right with you.
I do, however, have a hard time imagining a request-based system (like FOIA) for any kind of Congressional information that doesn't become a minefield of unintended consequences. The closest parallels I can think of are GAO reports, CRS reports, and Ethics investigations, all subject to carefully prioritized consideration only by the request of a Member, and all carefully designed to avoid politicization, abuse, and separation of powers issues.
I'd also like to point out that these support mechanisms are generally overloaded, with GAO currently hovering around half its previous FTE levels, despite a workload increase and compelling evidence that spending on GAO yields a very high return on investment (by dispelling waste and abuse). They're also not fulfilling their statutory requirements,<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/12/17/the-gaos-unheeded-mandate/> as set by the Ethics in Government Act.
So I guess I'm asking, precisely, whether there are additional disclosure enhancements for Congress that fall outside rules and administrative process reforms, aside from funding and supporting the legislative support agencies that generate public congressional information.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:58 PM, J.H. Snider <sni...@isolon.org<mailto:sni...@isolon.org>> wrote:
If legislative procedure is to be brought into the information age (so that legislative procedure actually generates democratically useful information), it will have to be instituted the way all legislative procedure has been instituted: through the resolutions of Congress. Thus, I see no separations of power issue, including conflict with the Constitution's speech or debate clause.
It is true that incumbent members of Congress have a blatant conflict of interest in instituting certain types of democratically desirable legislative procedures. But I would not argue that the executive or judicial branch should thus be given the power to do what Congress will not do for itself. I do hope that one day a citizens assembly will have an important role to play in dealing with issues where incumbent members of Congress have a blatant conflict of interest. But I conceive of a citizens assembly at the Federal level as only a type of congressional committee, with final authority still given to duly elected members of Congress.
Less ideally but more practically, I hope that one day a minority party will find it in its interest create the type of vigorous deliberative forum ("shadow legislature") that information technology now makes eminently feasible. Once this legislative genie was out of the bottle-like instituting Thomas or televising floor coverage-I believe it would be hard to place it back in.
In sum, I am optimistic that the information arms race problem can be mitigated without violating the Constitution.
--Jim Snider
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com<mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com> [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com<mailto:openhouseproject@googlegro ups.com>] On Behalf Of John Wonderlich
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2008 5:27 PM
To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com<mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, of course)
How would you reconcile your solution -- the solution to the "arms race" between legislators and the public accountability mechanisms -- to the separation of powers or the speech or debate clause? If pushes for data availability are met with a shifting locus of legislative clout (bundling in omnibus bills, etc), as can be expected, what solution wouldn't hinder an institution that is already on the weak end of its range? I'm concerned about legislative prerogative.
My question, though, is this: how can disclosure requirements that aren't House or Senate Rules-based place restrictions on Congress without affecting the independence of the body? Doesn't any "law of general applicability" (if I'm getting the terms right), if applied to Congress separately, introduce inter-branch concerns? Even the Ethics in Government Act, with its financial disclosure requirements, is applied to Congress through a convoluted agreement between the House and Senate Rules and the US Code, each of which sort of claiming primacy in their respective domains, with the House Rules excerpting the Code.
That the legal context surrounding disclosure requirements made outside a simple Rules regime is convoluted is probably not a surprise in a common law system, but I do think the lack of clarity in this realm makes it all the more difficult to propose reforms outside the context of rules requirements.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:28 PM, J.H. Snider <jhsni...@jhsnider.net<mailto:jhsni...@jhsnider.net>> wrote:
I'm not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead to as much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this listserv seem to expect. For example, if amendments and bills are bundled into omnibus legislation, then congressional roll call votes become relatively uninformative. What we are seeing is an information arms race between incumbent legislators and the public. As the level of amendment/bill transparency increases, the accountability of amendment/bill information has decreased. So today we get lots of roll call votes on trivial issues, such as uncontroversial resolutions, and very few roll call votes on the really important issues before Congress. In my recent working paper for Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, I argue that the current move to increase transparency must be supplemented with an effort to fundamentally rethink legislative procedure so that this information arms race is short circuited. For example, the current push for greater transparency, such as readthebill.org<http://readthebill.org>'s legislative agenda, must be complemented by a greater push for the introduction of First Amendment values into legislative procedure.
Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good point. And I mean this seriously:
Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather than getting the advice of people they trust? For very complicated bills like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for understanding the ramifications of each provision, anyone except domain experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the text, and it would be a waste of time to try to read every word of the bill. For bills that are too long or complicated for any one person to reasonably read, it makes sense to divide up the labor of understanding the bill. The labor could be divided between different offices, even, and so long as they share notes, that would seem to be a reasonable thing to do.
On this view (which I don't necessarily agree with), "read[ing] the bill" isn't the right label for this cause.
So is this all really about reading bills? If there was more time, would they and should they? Or is the reason there isn't as much reading as one might like that bills are too complicated and it actually makes a lot of sense to make decisions in ways besides reading them?
(There's also the public access side to 72 hours which is still important, even if Members reading bills isn't.)
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com wrote:
> As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your
> input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book,
> for staters!)
> The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things
> related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful,
> meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that
> any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills
> or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed
> through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant
> or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee
> process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the
> process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public
> input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If
> possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your
> ideas are welcome.
> In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for
> transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put
> pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the
> Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they
> voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to
> address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72
> hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the
> same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an
> entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this
> legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
> Lisa Rosenberg
> Government Affairs Consultant
> The Sunlight Foundation
> On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
>> J.H. Snider wrote:
>>> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of
>>> Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon’s /Congressman’s
>>> Voting Decisions/.
>> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library
>> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already
>> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
>>> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a
>>> date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft
>>> Word has much of this type of functionality under its “reviewing” tab;
>>> Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative
>>> counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare
>>> new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped
>>> out when bills are posted to Thomas.
>> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported,
>> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full
>> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate
>> points internally but not published? That would be something like after
>> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before
>> a vote on the conference report.
>> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding
>> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It
>> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes,
>> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at
>> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and
>> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of
>> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which
>> Rob posted about [2].
>> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email
>> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to
>> get their support in:
>> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files
>> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to
>> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable.
>> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help
>> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in
>> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think
>> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless
>> for this).)
>> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the
>> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However,
>> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments
>> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the
>> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text,
>> rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
>>> [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer
>>> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM
>>> To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
>>> Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact,
>>> of course)
>>> David Weller wrote:
>>> > Also, to my delightwww.ReadtheBill.org<http://www.ReadtheBill.org> is
>>> > active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight
>>> > Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time goes
>>> > on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs."
>>> > feeds list in the lefthand column.
>>> To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a
>>> slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour
>>> rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is
>>> that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form
>>> of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces have
>>> (often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed
>>> amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee
>>> deliberations.
>>> Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses
>>> the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely?
>>> sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a heads-up.
>>> So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there.
>>> But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour rule"
>>> I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues.
>>> So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by the
>>> new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on:
>>> * How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read
>>> bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on
>>> 600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went
>>> into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill
>>> itself? How much of reading is done by staff and not by the Members
>>> themselves? And if they haven't read it, how do they decide how to vote
>>> (besides the obvious of being corralled by the whip)?
>>> * What is the average duration that the components of a bill are
>>> available to read by Members or the public before a vote? For instance,
>>> you might write: For bill X, 80% of the sections in the bill went back 6
>>> months to the measure as introduced, 10% of the sections in the bill
>>> went back 1 month to amendments introduced on the floor, and 10% of the
>>> sections came from amendments introduced just minutes before the vote.
>>> And then looking across bills, say, 40% of bills voted on had more than
>>> 10% of their sections established only within hours of the final vote.
>>> --
>>> - Josh Tauberer
>>> - GovTrack.us
>>> http://razor.occams.info >>> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
>>> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
>>> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
>> --
>> - Josh Tauberer
>> - GovTrack.us
Well, Culberson did complain on Twitter a while back that he would like more time to read the bills. So, I think it at least includes that issue, and we should really care about issues that are obvious problems and have pretty easy fixes. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't also try to solve the deeper problem of actually understanding the bills and voting responsibly :-)
-Josh
On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us>wrote:
> Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good > point. And I mean this seriously:
> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
> For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather > than getting the advice of people they trust? For very complicated bills > like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for > understanding the ramifications of each provision, anyone except domain > experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the > text, and it would be a waste of time to try to read every word of the > bill. For bills that are too long or complicated for any one person to > reasonably read, it makes sense to divide up the labor of understanding > the bill. The labor could be divided between different offices, even, > and so long as they share notes, that would seem to be a reasonable > thing to do.
> On this view (which I don't necessarily agree with), "read[ing] the > bill" isn't the right label for this cause.
> So is this all really about reading bills? If there was more time, would > they and should they? Or is the reason there isn't as much reading as > one might like that bills are too complicated and it actually makes a > lot of sense to make decisions in ways besides reading them?
> (There's also the public access side to 72 hours which is still > important, even if Members reading bills isn't.)
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields > falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to > Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com wrote: > > As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your > > input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book, > > for staters!) > > The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things > > related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful, > > meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that > > any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills > > or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed > > through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant > > or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee > > process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the > > process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public > > input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If > > possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your > > ideas are welcome.
> > In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for > > transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put > > pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the > > Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they > > voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to > > address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72 > > hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the > > same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an > > entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this > > legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
> > Lisa Rosenberg > > Government Affairs Consultant > > The Sunlight Foundation
> > On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote: > >> J.H. Snider wrote: > >>> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of > >>> Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's > >>> Voting Decisions/. > >> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library > >> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already > >> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> >>> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a > >>> date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft > >>> Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab; > >>> Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative > >>> counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare > >>> new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is > stripped > >>> out when bills are posted to Thomas. > >> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported, > >> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full > >> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate > >> points internally but not published? That would be something like after > >> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before > >> a vote on the conference report.
> >> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding > >> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It > >> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes, > >> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at > >> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and > >> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of > >> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which > >> Rob posted about [2].
> >> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email > >> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to > >> get their support in:
> >> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files > >> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to > >> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable. > >> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help > >> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in > >> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think > >> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless > >> for this).)
> >> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the > >> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However, > >> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments > >> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the > >> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text, > >> rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
> >>> -----Original Message----- > >>> From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com > >>> [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer > >>> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM > >>> To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com > >>> Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, > >>> of course) > >>> David Weller wrote: > >>> > Also, to my delightwww.ReadtheBill.org<http://www.ReadtheBill.org> > is > >>> > active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight > >>> > Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time > goes > >>> > on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs." > >>> > feeds list in the lefthand column. > >>> To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a > >>> slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour > >>> rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is > >>> that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form > >>> of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces > have > >>> (often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed > >>> amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee > >>> deliberations. > >>> Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses > >>> the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely? > >>> sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a > heads-up. > >>> So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there. > >>> But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour > rule" > >>> I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues. > >>> So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by > the > >>> new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on: > >>> * How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read > >>> bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on > >>> 600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went > >>> into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill > >>> itself? How much of reading is done by staff and not by the Members > >>> themselves? And if they haven't read it, how do they decide how to vote > >>> (besides the obvious of being corralled by the whip)? > >>> * What is the average duration that the components of a bill are > >>> available to read by Members or the public before a vote? For instance, > >>> you might write: For bill X, 80% of the sections in the bill went back > 6 > >>> months to the measure as introduced, 10% of the sections in the bill > >>> went back 1 month to
>For very complicated bills like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for understanding the ramifications of each >provision, anyone except domain experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the text, and it would be a waste of >time to try to read every word of the bill.
This complexity is by design. The domain owners deliberately create complexity to obscure their real purpose, which is usually fleecing taxpayers and/or consumers, and to game budget rules. Complexity also raises the costs of opposing them. I worked on the reform side of 1995-96 Farm Bill and we were constantly told "oh you just don't understand farm programs" as a way of de-legitimizing our arguments. Complexity also creates power for staff, and for the lobbying shops that will eventually employ those staff. The tax code works the same way. The complexity hides the graft and makes it impossible for Members who don't have professional committee staff to offer meaningful amendments or alternatives.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote:
> Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good > point. And I mean this seriously:
> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
> For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather > than getting the advice of people they trust? For very complicated bills > like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for > understanding the ramifications of each provision, anyone except domain > experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the > text, and it would be a waste of time to try to read every word of the > bill. For bills that are too long or complicated for any one person to > reasonably read, it makes sense to divide up the labor of understanding > the bill. The labor could be divided between different offices, even, > and so long as they share notes, that would seem to be a reasonable > thing to do.
> On this view (which I don't necessarily agree with), "read[ing] the > bill" isn't the right label for this cause.
> So is this all really about reading bills? If there was more time, would > they and should they? Or is the reason there isn't as much reading as > one might like that bills are too complicated and it actually makes a > lot of sense to make decisions in ways besides reading them?
> (There's also the public access side to 72 hours which is still > important, even if Members reading bills isn't.)
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields > falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to > Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com wrote: >> As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your >> input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book, >> for staters!) >> The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things >> related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful, >> meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that >> any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills >> or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed >> through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant >> or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee >> process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the >> process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public >> input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If >> possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your >> ideas are welcome.
>> In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for >> transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put >> pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the >> Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they >> voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to >> address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72 >> hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the >> same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an >> entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this >> legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
>> Lisa Rosenberg >> Government Affairs Consultant >> The Sunlight Foundation
>> On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote: >>> J.H. Snider wrote: >>>> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of >>>> Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's >>>> Voting Decisions/. >>> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library >>> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already >>> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
>>>> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a >>>> date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft >>>> Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab; >>>> Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative >>>> counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare >>>> new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is stripped >>>> out when bills are posted to Thomas. >>> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported, >>> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full >>> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate >>> points internally but not published? That would be something like after >>> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before >>> a vote on the conference report.
>>> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding >>> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It >>> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes, >>> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at >>> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and >>> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of >>> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which >>> Rob posted about [2].
>>> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email >>> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to >>> get their support in:
>>> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files >>> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to >>> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable. >>> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help >>> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in >>> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think >>> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless >>> for this).)
>>> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the >>> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However, >>> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments >>> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the >>> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text, >>> rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com >>>> [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer >>>> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM >>>> To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com >>>> Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, >>>> of course) >>>> David Weller wrote: >>>> > Also, to my delightwww.ReadtheBill.org<http://www.ReadtheBill.org> is >>>> > active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight >>>> > Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time goes >>>> > on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs." >>>> > feeds list in the lefthand column. >>>> To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a >>>> slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour >>>> rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is >>>> that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form >>>> of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces have >>>> (often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed >>>> amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee >>>> deliberations. >>>> Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses >>>> the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely? >>>> sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a heads-up. >>>> So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there. >>>> But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour rule" >>>> I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger issues. >>>> So, for instance, I would love to see some original research done by the >>>> new Sunlight version of ReadTheBill on: >>>> * How Members and their staffs read legislation. How often do they read >>>> bills from start to finish? On tiny bills it must be more often than on >>>> 600 page bills. How often have they read all of the pieces that went >>>> into a bill before a vote even if they haven't read the final bill >>>> itself? How much of reading is done by
> Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good > point. And I mean this seriously:
> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
> For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather > than getting the advice of people they trust?
The almost tautological answer is that bills are part of the legislative process rather than the regulatory one.
There are lots of issues, from the Fed's setting of interest rates to the Supreme Court's interpretation of legal principle to the FCC's regulation of Class C devices that are indeed handed over to a group of technocrats.
Legislation, however, does not work that way, and allowing bills to become part of a technocratic process by fiat of complexity is lazy in the individual case and dangerous to the US system of government in the overall case.
Note that much of this danger is in the past, just this sort of 'technicalization' of legislation having already happened in many places. But that doesn't mean we have to like it, or refuse to fight it.
This push for Members reading bills also says nothing about whether any given technocratic solution is good or bad. It may be the case that there shouldn't *be* a Farm Bill, and that the Department of Agriculture should take on the needed functions directly. But it's not, and if that sort of change is going to be made, it should be made in public.
I think it would be a mistake, though, to simply accept that the goal of a readable bill, whose vote Members can be held accountable for because their constituents can assume they and their staffs could have read it, can be acceptably thwarted by the simple act of making that bill too complicated to understand.
> like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for > understanding the ramifications of each provision, anyone except domain > experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the > text, and it would be a waste of time to try to read every word of the > bill. For bills that are too long or complicated for any one person to > reasonably read, it makes sense to divide up the labor of understanding > the bill. The labor could be divided between different offices, even, > and so long as they share notes, that would seem to be a reasonable > thing to do.
> On this view (which I don't necessarily agree with), "read[ing] the > bill" isn't the right label for this cause.
> So is this all really about reading bills? If there was more time, would > they and should they? Or is the reason there isn't as much reading as > one might like that bills are too complicated and it actually makes a > lot of sense to make decisions in ways besides reading them?
> (There's also the public access side to 72 hours which is still > important, even if Members reading bills isn't.)
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields > falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to > Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com wrote: > > As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your > > input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book, > > for staters!) > > The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things > > related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful, > > meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that > > any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills > > or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed > > through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant > > or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee > > process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the > > process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public > > input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If > > possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your > > ideas are welcome.
> > In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for > > transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put > > pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the > > Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they > > voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to > > address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72 > > hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the > > same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an > > entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this > > legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
> > Lisa Rosenberg > > Government Affairs Consultant > > The Sunlight Foundation
> > On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote: > >> J.H. Snider wrote: > >>> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of > >>> Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's > >>> Voting Decisions/. > >> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library > >> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has already > >> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
> >>> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a > >>> date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft > >>> Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab; > >>> Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative > >>> counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare > >>> new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is > stripped > >>> out when bills are posted to Thomas. > >> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported, > >> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full > >> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate > >> points internally but not published? That would be something like after > >> amendments but before the vote on passage, after a conference but before > >> a vote on the conference report.
> >> Once the text is available, making a line-by-line comparison and adding > >> 'red lines' is technically straightforward. I do it on GovTrack. [1] It > >> would help to have the bill text as drafted with GPO locator codes, > >> rather than PDFs from GPO or HTML from THOMAS, which GPO *sells* at > >> $8,000/year (any buyers listening? we can split the cost...), and > >> getting public access to those files was part of the motivation of > >> mentioning the GPO in the House leg branch appropriations report, which > >> Rob posted about [2].
> >> So there are really two parts to this, and considering from Tom's email > >> that it would seem to be a big benefit to Members, it would be nice to > >> get their support in:
> >> 1) Having GPO & leg counsel publish, to the public, the raw files > >> that they write legislation in. This would allow the public to > >> pick up the task of making bill changes readily understandable. > >> (XML is already made available for bills, mostly. It would help > >> to have the GPO locator code files for the bills not drafted in > >> XML. No files are made available for amendments, and I think > >> only PDFs for conference reports (and PDFs are entirely useless > >> for this).)
> >> 2) Increasing the frequency bills are drafted and published to the > >> public. Namely, before votes rather than after votes. However, > >> what frequency is needed depends a lot on what format amendments > >> are published in. The richer the format is for amendments, the > >> more we can have computers pick up the work of updating bill text, > >> rather than asking leg counsel to do more work.
> >>> -----Original Message----- > >>> From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com > >>> [mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Josh Tauberer > >>> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 9:40 AM > >>> To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com > >>> Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact, > >>> of course) > >>> David Weller wrote: > >>> > Also, to my delightwww.ReadtheBill.org<http://www.ReadtheBill.org> > is > >>> > active again, as it is now under the management of the Sunlight > >>> > Foundation. Check it out and anticipate more stuff added as time > goes > >>> > on. It is in All Things Reform's "Federal Government Ethics Orgs." > >>> > feeds list in the lefthand column. > >>> To put in my two cents on that issue- I hope ReadTheBill takes a > >>> slightly broader perspective on this issue going forward than a 72 hour > >>> rule. What some of us learned at a conference a couple of months ago is > >>> that legislation doesn't appear out of nowhere. Even if the final form > >>> of a bill is not decided on until moments before a vote, the pieces > have > >>> (often? sometimes?) been in play for a long time, either as proposed > >>> amendments, as separate bills, or as issues going back to committee > >>> deliberations. > >>> Not that this really excuses Congress from being deliberate, or excuses > >>> the Members from not even reading legislation in its entirety (rarely? > >>> sometimes? usually?), or excuses them from giving the public a > heads-up. > >>> So I think a 72 hour rule is a good idea, no doubts there. > >>> But to collapse all three of those problems into a simple "72 hour > rule" > >>> I think would be a mistake, and misses the larger
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:
8. Bills and joint resolutions are subject to readings as follows: (a)...in full when...first considered. (b)...when the bill...is read for amendment in a committee of the Whole House... (c)...a third reading precedes passage...
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.
Second, 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<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/07/26/120/>(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 <http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/618-Digital-Bill-of-Rights>, 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<http://www.snopes.com/info/glossary.asp>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.
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Clay Shirky <c...@shirky.com> wrote: > Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good >> point. And I mean this seriously:
>> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
>> For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather >> than getting the advice of people they trust?
> The almost tautological answer is that bills are part of the legislative > process rather than the regulatory one.
> There are lots of issues, from the Fed's setting of interest rates to the > Supreme Court's interpretation of legal principle to the FCC's regulation of > Class C devices that are indeed handed over to a group of technocrats.
> Legislation, however, does not work that way, and allowing bills to become > part of a technocratic process by fiat of complexity is lazy in the > individual case and dangerous to the US system of government in the overall > case.
> Note that much of this danger is in the past, just this sort of > 'technicalization' of legislation having already happened in many places. > But that doesn't mean we have to like it, or refuse to fight it.
> This push for Members reading bills also says nothing about whether any > given technocratic solution is good or bad. It may be the case that there > shouldn't *be* a Farm Bill, and that the Department of Agriculture should > take on the needed functions directly. But it's not, and if that sort of > change is going to be made, it should be made in public.
> I think it would be a mistake, though, to simply accept that the goal of a > readable bill, whose vote Members can be held accountable for because their > constituents can assume they and their staffs could have read it, can be > acceptably thwarted by the simple act of making that bill too complicated to > understand.
> -clay
> For very complicated bills >> like the Farm Bill, where knowledge of the domain is critical for >> understanding the ramifications of each provision, anyone except domain >> experts would learn a lot more talking to a human than looking at the >> text, and it would be a waste of time to try to read every word of the >> bill. For bills that are too long or complicated for any one person to >> reasonably read, it makes sense to divide up the labor of understanding >> the bill. The labor could be divided between different offices, even, >> and so long as they share notes, that would seem to be a reasonable >> thing to do.
>> On this view (which I don't necessarily agree with), "read[ing] the >> bill" isn't the right label for this cause.
>> So is this all really about reading bills? If there was more time, would >> they and should they? Or is the reason there isn't as much reading as >> one might like that bills are too complicated and it actually makes a >> lot of sense to make decisions in ways besides reading them?
>> (There's also the public access side to 72 hours which is still >> important, even if Members reading bills isn't.)
>> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields >> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to >> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
>> Lrosenb...@sunlightfoundation.com wrote: >> > As we at Sunlight embark on reigniting Readthebill.org, all of your >> > input is invaluable. (I guess I'm going to pick up Kingdon's book, >> > for staters!) >> > The site will eventually be a one-stop-shopping site for all things >> > related to the 72 hour rule, our ultimate goal being getting a useful, >> > meaningful piece of legislation enacted. It goes without saying that >> > any 72 hour rule will have to address the key stages where bad bills >> > or bad provisions become law. We want to end bills being jammed >> > through at the end of a congressional session, and control irrelevant >> > or new provisions being inserted during the conference committee >> > process. At the same time, there are many stages earlier in the >> > process where bills are drafted, debated and amended where public >> > input could be even more valuable then during the end game. If >> > possible we want to find ways to best address those issues and your >> > ideas are welcome.
>> > In addition to defining the appropriate times and methods for >> > transparent legislation, we are also seeking a few key things to put >> > pressure on Members to a 72 hour rule. Examples of bills like the >> > Patriot Act, where no one knew what they were voting on before they >> > voted, are going to be crucial to that endeavor. We also need to >> > address the issue of major amendments--allowing them to sit for 72 >> > hours before a vote is a perfect way to fillibuster a bill. At the >> > same time, not requiring review of significant amendments creates an >> > entirely new avenue for mischief and undermining the goal of this >> > legislation. Your thoughts are appreciated.
>> > Lisa Rosenberg >> > Government Affairs Consultant >> > The Sunlight Foundation
>> > On Aug 25, 6:41 am, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us> wrote: >> >> J.H. Snider wrote: >> >>> There is a large academic literature on the subject of how members of >> >>> Congress read bills. The classic is John Kingdon's /Congressman's >> >>> Voting Decisions/. >> >> Ahha, great, thanks for the tip. I plan to get it from the library >> >> today. So I revise point 1 of my previous email- if the work has >> already >> >> been done, all ReadTheBill has to do is summarize it!
>> >>> On the question of tracking the history of bills, what is needed is a >> >>> date stamped, dynamic, integrated bill versioning system. Microsoft >> >>> Word has much of this type of functionality under its "reviewing" tab; >> >>> Adobe Acrobat also has this type of functionality. The legislative >> >>> counsels who do the bill drafting use such software when they prepare >> >>> new bill text for members of Congress. But this information is >> stripped >> >>> out when bills are posted to Thomas. >> >> GPO and THOMAS post bills at various stages- introduced, reported, >> >> engrossed, enrolled, etc. Are bills drafted --- that is, is the full >> >> text of the current state of a bill put together --- at intermediate >> >> points
> 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.
This is the positive half the story. The other half is to disallow representatives to represent anyone, insofar as the voters are inclined to throw them out.
At least part of the value of making it _possible_ to read bills (italics John's) is to increase the sense in the electorate that their Representative read the bill and approved of it when they voted, _even if the Representative didn't actually do that._ (italics mine.)
If it increases the sense among the voters that ignorance of the legislation is no excuse, it's a win in my book.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Josh Tauberer <taube...@govtrack.us>wrote:
> Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good > point. And I mean this seriously:
> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
Let me offer a quote from Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council here:
"There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now."
Clay Shirky wrote: > Last night I ran some of these issues by a friend who raised a very good > point. And I mean this seriously:
> Why should we want Members or their staffs to necessarily read bills?
> For instance, do we think they learn more by reading legislation rather > than getting the advice of people they trust?
> The almost tautological answer is that bills are part of the legislative > process rather than the regulatory one. ... > Legislation, however, does not work that way, and allowing bills to > become part of a technocratic process by fiat of complexity is lazy in > the individual case and dangerous to the US system of government in the > overall case.
Why?
I'm actually not sure exactly what you're responding to, so I'll take it in two parts.
My (friend's) hypothesis is that Members legitimately learn more by doing things other than reading the text itself. If that's true, then it's very well a good thing and certainly isn't dangerous. If there's danger, it must be because Members have been missing something by not reading the text, but what?
I agree that complexity may be dangerous, since it shifts power, as Chris wrote. But this takes things in a new direction because this isn't a time issue at all. For as many hours as there are given to read bills, one can make the text that much more complex. Giving more time because bills are too complicated is just playing into the complexity arms race.
But back to time. John raises the "making it possible" case for Members to read bills, but notes that while reading bills on the floor is a part of the rules, it's skipped. This takes the issue a new direction too, since a Member who hasn't been given time to read a bill could certainly interject here. Moreover, he might vote no on bills that have been pushed forward too fast, or on cloture, and if a bill really *had* been pushed forward too fast, certainly a majority of Members ought to agree, at least in principle. None of that ever happens to my knowledge. I don't hear about no votes being explained on procedural grounds. Anyway, the point here is that members already have the possibility. In fact, they have the possibility to change their rules too, obviously.
Just looking at the narrow issue of having time and reading bills, I don't think you can take the "Sit! Stay! Roll over! Readthebill!" ought of it. Because they already can, by the rules. If they are lacking possibilities, it's because they're not free to follow the rules. (And why not? Somehow it surely goes back to money.)
John wrote: > "Representing" a district shouldn't be a metaphor, it should be more of a gerund.
I applaud the use of linguistic terminology. :)
Let me sum up my thinking at the moment:
* An obligation for Members to "read bills" is a mistake. In many cases, it would be an improper use of their or their staff's time because they can legitimately do a better job by going other routes to understand the issue. Further, as John says, "you can't mandate competence," and I think that nails it fairly well.
* The fact that Members don't read bill text is possibly a sign that bills are too complicated, and complexity is surely a de-democratizing force, as Chris and Clay talk about. But how complex is too complex? I don't think there is an obvious way to approach this problem, given that there's no concrete goal to set where you'd say "yeah that's not too complex". It's worth a look on its own, but seems to be an issue separate from time.
* I don't know if we know just how much is rammed through at the last minute. Tom Jones raised the cases of conference reports and substitute amendments pushed too fast. How often does this occur? How pervasive is it? What are the parliamentary issues involved in those cases? These questions need to be answered.
* Members quite already have the potential to get the time to understand votes, which they frequently abandon when they allow bills to not be read the third time. (The Farm Bill was around 37,000 words, which read at 180 wds/min is 3 1/2 hours. For a Member who put off learning about the bill to the last minute, I'd say 3 1/2 hours is a good amount of time.) Members clearly have, by the rules, recourse if they haven't been given enough time, which is to withhold a yes vote. Further, nothing we say gives them any more power to change their own rules. If they claim they don't have enough time, then it's not the rules that's the problem. It's a structural or social issue, because either those that want more time are in the minority (lowercase m), or the majority doesn't feel free to exercise the power they have. There is an issue there as well, but it's something mostly unrelated to reading bills.
* The structural/social issues alluded to above is an issue itself. If there's pressure to not read a bill, then pressure should be put squarely on those wielding the power. If this is a problem, the answer is to not blame the whole Congress with a blanket statement about reading bills, but to pin the blame directly on the Members acting unfairly.
* Finally, the public comment component of a 72 hours rule I think is the one part of the point of readthebill that still makes sense.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> My (friend's) hypothesis is that Members legitimately learn more by > doing things other than reading the text itself. If that's true, then > it's very well a good thing and certainly isn't dangerous. If there's > danger, it must be because Members have been missing something by not > reading the text, but what?
Clauses added at the last minute. That is the principle danger here, because that is part of the class of things that can't be learned about by "doing other things."
The danger is that the principal-agent problem is made worse by those last-minute additions. The change to a 72 hour rule means that there can be no last minute additions, by definition.
> I agree that complexity may be dangerous, since it shifts power, as > Chris wrote. But this takes things in a new direction because this isn't > a time issue at all. For as many hours as there are given to read bills, > one can make the text that much more complex. Giving more time because > bills are too complicated is just playing into the complexity arms race.
...but out of the opacity one, and like John, I believe the principal readers will be the public, not the Members. Remember the lesson, from Lucasfilm's Habitat to Cloudmakers -- the complexity a small group can throw at a large group is minimized if the large groups has the right tools.
> Just looking at the narrow issue of having time and reading bills, I > don't think you can take the "Sit! Stay! Roll over! Readthebill!" ought > of it. Because they already can, by the rules. If they are lacking > possibilities, it's because they're not free to follow the rules. (And > why not? Somehow it surely goes back to money.)
But I'm not looking at the narrow issue of time and reading the bills.
The time is for the public to read the bills, and to hold the legislators accountable *as if* they had read the bills. Its a question of incentives and consequences for the legislators, in my view, not just time and opportunity.
J.H. Snider wrote: > I’m not convinced that improved amendment/bill transparency will lead > to as much enhanced accountability as Sunlight and many on this > listserv seem to expect. (snip) > I argue that the current move to increase transparency must be > supplemented with an effort to fundamentally rethink legislative > procedure so that this information arms race is short circuited.
I wanted to respond to this also... I think this is a good point, in the sense that incremental changes on a continuum ("if only we had 72 more hours"-type proposals) really have no end goal. I complained a lot about the big ethics bill last year because a lot of it had to do with increasing dollar amount numbers or whatever. Increasing reporting by re-scaling what was important. Nothing fundamental.
This happened to have been on my mind the last month as I was reading a book on (surprise) food policy (Stuffed & Starved by Raj Patel). The book has a lot of useful points, but when it gets to "and here's the problem", the claims are all "if only more corporations were involved in the process", "if only there was more competition"-type suggestions. How much is enough competition in the market? Will Patel ever be satisfied?
The question, though, is what kind of fundamental changes are actually realistic? Or, how do you get to a fundamental change through incremental steps?
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
> The question, though, is what kind of fundamental changes are actually > realistic? Or, how do you get to a fundamental change through > incremental steps?
One fundamental change would be: No last minute additions, retractions, alterations, or compromises, by definition.
I think this would be a profound change, far larger than the "So what? The Reps can read the bill now" argument suggests.
"One fundamental change would be: No last minute additions, retractions,
alterations, or compromises, by definition."
Another fundamental change that would have a profound effect: Line Item
Budgeting. If Congressmen have to vote separately on every item, the
incentive to try to lard up legislation and sneak in small items would
be reduced dramatically. It doesn't have to be difficult - just have
them submit a checked-off list of yes/no on each item.
Not only would the incentive to load bills up be reduced, but
Congressmen would become accountable for their votes on each element of
the bill. In the current omnibus approach, a bill will pass even if
there is widespread agreement that much of it is wasteful and
inappropriate.
_________
Jon Henke
Strategic Manager
[703] 253-4333
New Media Strategies
________________________________
From: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
[mailto:openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Clay Shirky
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 5:15 PM
To: openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact,
of course)
The question, though, is what kind of fundamental changes are
actually
realistic? Or, how do you get to a fundamental change through
incremental steps?
One fundamental change would be: No last minute additions, retractions,
alterations, or compromises, by definition.
I think this would be a profound change, far larger than the "So what?
The Reps can read the bill now" argument suggests.
This would be the legislative equivalent of clock-resetting as a
protection against auction sniping.
> Another fundamental change that would have a profound effect: Line Item
> Budgeting.
Are you talking about the 72-hour rule? Even if it would be a roadblock to
omnibus bills (and I don't see how it would, except for cases in which
non-germane clauses are added at the last minute, which are often used to
block the bill anyway), mere roadblocks will always be overcome. The
last-minute changes, though, would inherently be impossible, as such changes
would add minutes to the clock. As a result, no legislation would slip under
the wire. Nor would legislation be approved by exhaustion ("What? There's a
new clause in this bill? Screw it, the vote's five minutes away and I'm
tired of arguing."). I know of no such cases, but I wonder...
One possible countermeasure to this rule would be to make edits during bill
enrollment; however, I only know of one case of substantive changes during
this phase. Can it be gotten away with on a large scale?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Young#Coconut_Road
On 8/28/08, Jon Henke <jhe...@newmediastrategies.net> wrote:
> "One fundamental change would be: No last minute additions, retractions,
> alterations, or compromises, by definition."
> Another fundamental change that would have a profound effect: Line Item
> Budgeting. If Congressmen have to vote separately on every item, the
> incentive to try to lard up legislation and sneak in small items would be
> reduced dramatically. It doesn't have to be difficult – just have them
> submit a checked-off list of yes/no on each item.
> Not only would the incentive to load bills up be reduced, but Congressmen
> would become accountable for their votes on each element of the bill. In
> the current omnibus approach, a bill will pass even if there is widespread
> agreement that much of it is wasteful and inappropriate.
> _________
> *Jon Henke*
> Strategic Manager
> [703] 253-4333
> New Media Strategies
> ------------------------------
> *From:* openhouseproject@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> openhouseproject@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Clay Shirky
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 28, 2008 5:15 PM
> *To:* openhouseproject@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* [openhouseproject] Re: Navigating legislation (after the fact,
> of course)
> The question, though, is what kind of fundamental changes are actually
> realistic? Or, how do you get to a fundamental change through
> incremental steps?
> One fundamental change would be: No last minute additions, retractions,
> alterations, or compromises, by definition.
> I think this would be a profound change, far larger than the "So what? The
> Reps can read the bill now" argument suggests.
> This would be the legislative equivalent of clock-resetting as a protection
> against auction sniping.
