House Procedure–and Transparency in Collapse
Over on the WashingtonWatch.com blog, I’ve laid out in the simplest terms I could what’s going on in terms of procedure with health care overhaul legislation. The post, called “What is Deeming, Anyway?“, comes in at a mere 900 words… If you’re a real public policy junkie, you might like it.
But what about the transparency oriented processes that President Obama and leaders like Speaker Pelosi promised the public? Recall that the Speaker promised to post the health care bill online for 72 hours before a vote back in September.
There was debate about whether she stuck to her promise then. And it was probably a one-time promise. It’s almost certain that she will not do so now. If she lines up the votes to pass the bill, the vote will happen. Right. Then.
What about President Obama’s promise to put health care negotiations on C-SPAN? The daylong roundtable debate on health care was an engaging illustration of what happens when you do transparent legislating. Voters got a clearer picture of where each side stands—and perhaps saw that there actually is some competence on both sides of the aisle. Some competence.
The health care negotiations going on right now are the ones that matter. This is when the most important details are being hammered out. This is when the bargaining that draws the public’s ire is happening. But I’m not seeing it on C-SPAN.
President Obama’s promise may have been naive, but that doesn’t excuse breaking it. The inside negotiations going on this week represent an ongoing violation of the president’s C-SPAN promise.
And there’s good reason to anticipate that the president will violate his Sunlight Before Signing promise as well. This was his promise to post bills online for five days after he receives them from Congress before signing them into law. Read the rest of this post »
The Health Care Debate on C-SPAN
Today, President Obama began to fulfill the promise that health care legislation would be hashed out on C-SPAN. His discussion with congressional leaders was broadcast on that cable channel and streamed live on the Internet. The nearly six-and-a-half hour-long meeting began to touch on many of the issues at stake in the health care area.
I’ll leave observations about the merits to our experts, who live-blogged the morning session. I found a few things interesting from a transparency perspective:
The format was far more conducive to productive discussion than procedures for “debate” in Congress. What generally happens in the House and Senate is display of members’ and senators’ well-settled views. So today interested Americans could get a real sense of the issues and how their representatives think about them.
There seemed to be a division between representatives who knew the technical subject matter and those who—for lack of a better phrase—knew the emotional subject matter. Surprisingly astute commentaries on fiscal realities were met with appeals to the story of one constituent or another—or of members’ own families’ health predicaments.
Though there was much talking past one another, these are all good things to see. It will inform the public, and a better informed public will make better decisions about health care legislation, about individual representatives, and about the proper role of government.
I know how I feel about these things. (I’m soft-pedaling my views here as hard as I can…) My opinions didn’t change, though I adopted new nuances to my thinking.
It’s doubtful that many people’s opinions will change. But I’m confident that a more open process will lead to better results in many senses: specific policy results; electoral activity; and people’s overall sense of the role of government.
Today’s meeting only scratched the surface, of course. Sessions like this in the days and weeks to come will do more to improve the transparency of the lawmaking process, in this issue and hopefully others. Today’s transparency precedent is something that the president and federal lawmakers should not retreat from.
Sunlight Before Signing: Obama Racks Up the Wins!
I’ve covered President Obama’s “Sunlight Before Signing” campaign promise here many times before. And, as predicted when I last reported, Obama has turned the corner and begun giving bills some sunlight.
In December, five bills were posted on Whitehouse.gov for five days before the president signed them. (Technically, they were only linked to from Whitehouse.gov, but the link allowed citizens to find the text of bills awaiting his signature—the substance of the promise.)
Those five join the DTV Delay Act, Public Law 111-4, to make six out of 124. That’s a .048 batting average on Sunlight Before Signing, a huge rise from the .009 average he had after signing P.L. 111-118.
After the jump, you can see the latest SBS chart. I expect that President Obama’s average will continue to rise as more bills see the public airing he promised when he campaigned for the presidency.
It Could Happen Here Too
The Washington Post reports that China’s ‘netizens’ are holding authorities to new standard.
The House Health Care Bill — Transparent or Not?
The House health care bill is reportedly coming to the floor this weekend, and House Speaker Pelosi committed in September to a 72-hour delay between the time the bill is posted online and a final vote.
Is that 72-hour delay happening? Some say yes. Some say no.
On the “yes” side are some folks at the Sunlight Foundation. John Wonderlich wrote a post last Sunday called “72 Hours is Now.” He hailed the posting of the health care bill well in advance of a vote.
“Public outcry, partisan pressure, and rising expectations are forcing Congress’s hand,” he wrote, ”and it’s now (apparently) taken as a matter of course that this bill is online for a long weekend before its final consideration.”
Paul Blumenthal followed that up mid-week, sounding slightly more cautious notes but hailing the posting of the “final manager’s amendment.” His post restarted the 72-hour clock.
Which brings us to the folks who say no.
On the Weekly Standard blog, John McCormack says that Speaker Pelosi plans to violate the promise to post the health care bill online for 72 hours.
House members are still negotiating important issues in the bill — whether it will provide taxpayer-funding for abortions, for example. Pelosi is pushing for a Saturday House vote, and a number of big changes will be introduced, likely less than 24 hours before the vote takes place (if in fact it does).
Obama Transparency Update II
An editorial in the New York Times the other day reminded me that it’s a good time for another look at the Obama administration’s record on transparency.
The editorial lauded a new policy of disclosure for the Secret Service’s logs of White House visits, naming the visitor, who set up the meeting, where it was held, and how long it lasted. The Times gushed: “[T]he administration is well on course to be the most open in modern times, with such earlier initiatives as the online Data.gov to allow citizen access to huge amounts of federal agency information.”
These things are good—and the White House certainly means well—but I’m a little less enthusiastic, and I think the Times set the bar at the wrong height: A ham sandwich is more transparent than recent administrations. Candidate Obama made some firm commitments about transparency that are better for gauging his performance.
Disclosure of White House visitor logs is a small step forward, but I agree with the Times that a three to four month delay in revealing visits is too long. Much of this information is computerized at the White House and could be revealed in real time or within 24 hours. Also, visits that are not revealed for security or diplomatic reasons should be noted as such so that the quantity of such visits can be tracked over time and misuse of this secrecy ferreted out.
It’s also slightly ironic to see the Times sing President Obama’s transparency praises while the White House flouts a transparency commitment made to the paper back in June. For a story called “White House Changes the Terms of a Campaign Pledge About Posting Bills Online,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told New York Times reporter Katherine Seelye, “[O]nce it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House will post the bill online.” It hadn’t happened yet when I wrote about it in July, and it still hasn’t happened, even though 22 more bills have passed into law since then.
Below the jump is an updated ”Sunlight Before Signing” chart, reflecting all the bills President Obama has signed to date. Still only one (of sixty-one bills) has been posted on Whitehouse.gov for five days before signing. (That’s a .016 average, baseball fans.)
The Beginnings of Earmark Transparency
Under reforms announced in March, House members have to publicly declare the earmarks they’re requesting from the Appropriations Committee. Most of the requests have now been published and WashingtonWatch.com has assembled a state-by-state catalogue of links to Members’ earmark requests.
Getting earmark requests published is progress. Getting them published in uniform, machine-readable formats would allow the public to do really thorough oversight of all the projects that Members of Congress think federal taxpayer dollars should go to.
In December, we had a policy forum called “Just Give Us the Data!” where we explored some of the current issues in government transparency.
Who’s Blogging about Cato
A few bloggers who wrote about Cato this week:
- New York Times blogger Andrew C. Revkin wrote about Cato’s forthcoming full-page ad on climate change that will run in newspapers around the country next week.
- Wes Messamore helped set the record straight: Cato scholars have criticized the growth of government regardless of who’s in power.
- Law blogger Kenneth Lammers reviewed Tim Lynch’s new book, In the Name of Justice.
- Jim Harper’s blog post on government transparency made the cut on Bruce McQuain’s “Quote of the Day” segment at QandO.
- Brandon Dutcher posted Cato’s Monday podcast with Adam Schaeffer on universal pre-school.
- John Hood discussed Jagadeesh Gokhale’s new paper on the financial crisis at The Corner.
DHS Officials Skirt Open Meeting Laws to Promote REAL ID
There’s not much chance that U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials went to Annapolis to argue against having Maryland implement the national ID law. Maryland’s Gazette reports:
Federal homeland security officials skirted open meetings laws at a briefing last week on the state’s efforts to comply with the federal Real ID Act, unsettling several lawmakers in an era of heightened government transparency.
A meeting with the Maryland House Judiciary Committee members and other lawmakers was carefully regulated to avoid reaching a quorum so open meeting rules could be avoided.
Something is funny in the state of Maryland, and something is funny at the DHS, to insist on holding closed meetings about REAL ID during what President Obama promised would be the most open and transparent administration in history.
Napolitano revealed early this month that she has been collaborating with the National Governors Association on REAL ID. Just what they plan also remains a secret.
As governor of Arizona, she signed legislation to resist REAL ID, but politicians that come to Washington have a tremendous capacity to go native and start working to build federal power. There’s even precedent for them working with the NGA to do it.
New Podcast: ‘A More Transparent Federal Government’
Online technology offers President Obama more opportunities to increase government transparency than any president before him, says Jerry Brito, creator of StimulusWatch.org and senior fellow at the Mercatus Center.
In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Brito says that although Obama has taken positive steps toward increasing transparency, there are hurdles in place that are restricting open access to government data.
President Obama has been very clear about making sure that Americans know where every dollar goes…the problem though so far, is that we have a Web site called Recovery.gov, but there isn’t much there yet.
Is the New Obama Administration Walking Away from Transparency Already?
The new Whitehouse.gov went live shortly after Barack Obama became president yesterday. It has much of the look and feel of his transition Web site, Change.gov.
Among the featured items on the homepage today (they will change regularly, of course) is the site itself and the new administration’s commitment to transparency. However, the actual terms of that commitment come up pretty anemic.
In a post on the White House blog, Director of New Media Macon Phillips says:
President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.
Executive orders and proclamations? Information about senior leadership and the president’s priorities? That’s not breaking any new ground on transparency.
The transition’s “Seat at the Table” program required “any documents from official meetings with outside organizations [to] be posted on our website for people to review and comment on.”
The decision to port this practice over to the White House has either not been made, or has been decided against. Given that meetings are already happening, it will be a tough policy to implement if it is not implemented right away.
There is an “Office of Public Liaison” (and intergovernmental affairs) on the Whitehouse.gov site, but it’s nothing more than an email submission form at this point. “More ways for you to interact” are promised.
Words aren’t deeds, and it’s already too late to demonstrate a day-one commitment to transparency. Let’s hope the first steps of the new administration are not steps away from the important transparency precedents set by the transition.
Update: As this post was being written and edited, news stories were coming out about new executive orders dealing with ethics and transparency. Though I haven’t been able to find them yet – hint hint, Whitehouse.gov – the change to the interpretation of FOIA sounds like a welcome, though modest, step in the right direction.
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