Freedom for Vietnam’s Bloggers
Today the House of Representatives is debating H. Res. 672, which would call on the government of Vietnam to release imprisoned bloggers and respect Internet freedom.
Here is an article or two about what is happening with Vietnamese bloggers.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Law and Civil Liberties; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Transparent Health Care Legislating?
Will Americans get “quality time” with proposed health care legislation before it passes?
Some say no: The Senate Finance Committee recently turned back an effort to put Chairman Max Baucus’ bill online for 72 hours before the committee’s vote. The Committee is on the wrong side of history.
Transparency shifts power away from the center, so it’s favored by those out of power. It’s no wonder that Republican representative John Culberson, a member of the minority party, is putting H.R. 3400 (a significant health care bill) online for comment, using a tool called SharedBook.
Transparency won’t be a gift from government. It is something we have to take. That’s why I think the action lies in private efforts like OpenCongress, GovTrack, and (my own) WashingtonWatch.com. (Links are to sites’ H.R. 3400 pages.)
The public has a way of conforming their expectations to what’s possible, and transparent law-making is entirely possible today. Closed processes like the Senate Finance Committee’s consideration of health care legislation will not satisfy the public, and it will emerge from the committee with one strike against it irrespective of the merits.
Filed under: Health, Welfare & Entitlements; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Earmark Horse Hockey
I’ve been poring over the earmark request data collected in WashingtonWatch.com’s big earmark hunting contest, and correlating it to the earmarks that made it into bills. It’s slow going, so far . . .
But the excitement level sure builds when you take a look at what the money’s going to!
Do you have your tickets to the Pendleton (Ore.) Round-Up rodeo yet? It’s going on right now!
And you stand to contribute $500,000 to Pendleton Round-Up Foundation, which puts it on, thanks to an earmark in the Senate version of H.R. 3288, The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.
Senator Wyden (D-OR) requested $3.5 million for the facility where the rodeo is held. Senator Merkley (D-OR) requested a more modest $365,000.
The report for the bill has the federal government sending $500,000 to the Pendleton Round-Up Foundation for “reconstruction and construction needs of facilities which are critical to the local economy.” That’s right: The folks in Pendleton, Oregon want you to send them a half-million bucks for their “critical-to-the-local-economy” rodeo ring.
The people in Pendleton probably love their rodeo, and they’re entitled to! But it’s an open question whether they should be entitled to use your money in putting it on. For my part, I say horse hockey!
Filed under: Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy
Arizona to Feds: No “Enhanced” Drivers License
Last week, the governor of Arizona signed H.B. 2426, which bars the state from implementing the “enhanced” drivers license (EDL) program.
If the federal REAL ID revival bill (PASS ID) becomes law, it will give congressional approval to EDLs, which up to now have been simply a creation of the federal security and state driver licensing bureaucracies.
As governor of Arizona, the current Secretary of Homeland Security signed a memorandum of understanding with the DHS to implement EDLs, and she backs PASS ID even though she signed an anti-REAL ID bill as governor. As I said before, Secretary Napolitano seems to be taking the national ID tar baby in a loving embrace.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
“It’s a Lot Easier to Promise to Change Washington Than It Is to Actually Change It”
The New York Times has an interesting story on President Obama’s continuing failure to follow through on his “Sunlight Before Signing” promise. On the campaign trail, he said he would post bills online for five days before signing them. Two dozen bills now have his signature, and only one has been posted for five days before signing.
The article (and accompanying video) fixes on a couple of reasons why the president might be excused from carrying out the promise. One is the technical difficulty of managing potentially hundreds of thousands of comments. The promise did not include a promise to publish comments, though — much less to read them (though it would be politically astute to appear to do so). In my view, the difficulty of administering a public comment system — which was not part of the promise — does not excuse the failure to post the bills Congress presents to the president for five days before he signs them.
A second excuse is that posting bills online would be ineffectual. Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation is quoted saying, “There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless.”
I have done my level-best to illustrate how a five-day hold at the White House would have good effects on reducing earmarks, parochial amendments, and other shenanigans — such as congressional approval of bonuses to AIG executives.
Miller’s preferred approach — placing a similar hold on bills before they leave Congress — would have a similar effect — but nothing dramatically more open. Just as under a presidential hold, members of Congress and Senators would be more reticent to introduce potentially controversial amendments. Just as under a presidential hold, they would carefully avoid a blossoming of debate about their pet projects at the end of the legislative process. A congressional hold would change the upstream behavior of the politicians — just like a presidential hold would.
A presidential hold and a congressional hold are both good ideas, and they are not mutually exclusive. The presidential hold has a key advantage: The president has already promised it — to the cheers of American voters.
The New York Times story reports a small step toward meeting the actual terms of President Obama’s pledge:
“In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House will post the bill online,” said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman. “This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill, often many more than five days before the president signs it into law.”
If this means posting links to bills on the Thomas legislative system from Whitehouse.gov, this is something the White House has done sporadically, and it would increase transparency by a small margin if it were regularized. The administration should establish a uniform URL where bills are posted so that every American can easily find every bill the president signs. But, in terms of fulfilling President Obama’s promise, “posting a link from WhiteHouse.gov to THOMAS of a conference report that is expected to pass doesn’t cut it.”
I think this is grudging progress toward implementation of President Obama’s “Sunlight Before Signing” promise. In the video, the author of the Times article has the best line illustrating why the White House deserves modest congratulations for taking this step: “It’s a lot easier to promise to change Washington than it is to actually change it.”
Filed under: Government and Politics; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
House to Consider Ban on Body Scans
. . . or at least serious limitations, NextGov reports.
Something like the bill I discussed in a previous post may be included in the TSA Authorization Act. I wrote some about “strip search machines” back in February, too.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
$1,000 per U.S. Family in War Spending up for a Vote in the House Today
WashingtonWatch.com has done the math.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Tax and Budget Policy
Obama’s Transparency Average Drops
On the campaign trail, President Obama promised to post bills online for five days before signing them.
Last week, President Obama signed three new bills into law. None of them received the promised “Sunlight Before Signing” treatment – at least, not as far as our research reveals. (The White House has yet to establish a uniform place on its Web site where the public can look for bills that the President has received from Congress.)
The new bills put today’s podcast on Obama’s five-day pledge slightly out of date. He is not batting .091 on his transparency pledge. He’s batting .071. The substance of the podcast remains true, however: This is still a worse record than the Nationals.
President Obama waited more than five days to sign two of the three bills he passed into law last week. The simple matter of posting them on Whitehouse.gov would have fulfilled the promise as to those bills – and would have brought his average up to .214.
The current list of new laws, with presentment date and signing date, is after the break.
Filed under: Government and Politics; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Members with Undisclosed Earmarks Will Still Get Their Goodies
The Hill reports that Members of Congress who failed to disclose their earmark requests as required by new rules in the House will still get their goodies.
Members who failed to disclose their earmarks as required by the April 4 deadline should have them rejected out of hand. But Congress makes the rules, and Congress can break the rules.
WashingtonWatch.com compiled a state-by-state list of links to earmark requests recently. Because Members of Congress published their requests in different formats, information about all the earmarks that have been requested is still rather obscure.
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