House Appropriators May Limit Public Availability of Pending Bills

Attila Dimedici writes "The House Appropriations Committee is considering a draft report that would forbid the Library of Congress to allow bulk downloads of bills pending before Congress. The Library of Congress currently has an online database called THOMAS (for Thomas Jefferson) that allows people to look up bills pending before Congress. The problem is that THOMAS is somewhat clunky and it is difficult to extract data from it. This draft report would forbid the Library of Congress from modernizing THOMAS until a task force reports back. I am pretty sure that the majority of people on Slashdot agree that being able to better understand how the various bills being considered by Congress interact would be good for this country."

Comments

Obviously

[Stirling Newberry]

The Gingrich Revolution is too far to the left for the current House of Representatives.

Re:Obviously

[JackieBrown]

This is reasonable per Pelosi. As she said "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To

Re:Obviously

[d3ac0n]

He IS being accurate. He is pointing out that hiding the content of legislation isn't a GOP problem, it's a Democrat problem, as evidenced by the video he linked.

When Pelosi had control of the house, she intentionally and purposefully hid the contents of the "Obamacare" bill and used parliamentary tricks to avoid debate. There was even talk that the Democrats would use a trick called "Deem and Pass" to simply "Deem" the bill passed WITHOUT taking a vote on it. Yep, that's right; The Democrats, not the Republicans wanted to suspend the democratic process and simply force through a bill they wanted because people opposed it. This was a historical first for any Congress, and it was the Democrats that tried it. In the end they dropped it due to massive public pressure, and the bill passed on purely partisan lines. (Note that the Democrats had total control of both houses of Congress at the time.)

Also, as another poster pointed out below, wanting a full accounting and report of any major project so that all interested parties can review it before signing off on the expenditure is a responsible thing to do, something we want our representatives doing. Why is this bad just because the GOP is doing it? Doesn't that strike you as a hypocritical position to take?

As that other posted noted, this article is itself a troll and nothing but FUD. THOMAS isn't going down, even during the upgrade, so no access will be lost. The GOP just wants to do the upgrade properly and with full oversight. They should be applauded for being responsible with our money.

Re:Obviously

[hrvatska]

"Deem and Pass" Is Not "Without a Vote", and both parties use it. The Republicans used it to pass a budget bill in the House recently. The Dems used it in the House for healthcare legislation. The Republicans used it to pass the Bush tax cuts. There are plenty of examples of both parties using it. Both sides cry about the other side using this technique, but they both use it when it's to their advantage.

Re:Obviously

[WrecklessSandwich]

You mean the "Deem and Pass" trick the Boehner House actually tried to use at least once for the godawful GOP budget bills to try to bypass the Senate? Doesn't that strike you as a hypocritical position to take? Quick, post some more out of context Fox News clips of out of context quotes to show what a partisan shill you are.

It isn't the Democrats or the Republicans or even the (bad) 2-party system that's the problem. The problem is the Red vs. Blue adversarial partisan bullshit pushed by people like you that makes every issue divisive for its own sake to the point that nonsense like hiding the content of legislation and "Deem and Pass" are more attractive options than intelligent discussion. Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay must be spinning in their graves.

That being said, I agree with you about TFA being complete nonsense.

Re:Obviously

[0bject]

Article I, Section 8, clause 1 The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States Article I, Section 8, clause 3 To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes

Re:Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

It's purely a matter of saying it bluntly instead of trying to say it cleverly.

You can't say, "You MUST pay $640 to buy health insurance"-- unconstitutional.

But...

You can say, "You MUST give the federal government $640 per year in taxes. The Federal government will provide you health care. There will be tax exemptions for people whose income is low". -- constitutional

Re:Obviously

[cpu6502]

Let's ask the author of the constitution (quoting from memory): "There is nothing more natural than to start with a general phrase, and qualify it with particulars. The phrase 'provide general welfare' is qualified by the list of specifically enumerated power below it. Congress may only exercise those powers.

"To suppose Congress might do anything that falls within the 'general welfare' would give the central government unlimited power to do whatever it pleases, and there is a whole host of proofs that was never intended by the original framers, nor by myself." - James Madison, author of the Constitution.

He also authored, with Jefferson, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which state the powers of the central government are few, while the bulk of the power is reserved to the People and their Legislatures (amendment 10). The Congress may not mandate you buy car insurance. But the States can. It is a power reserved to them, and the same is true of any other form of insurance.

And finally:
Congress has the power to regulate commerce AMONG the states. Not inside the states, and most-definitely not commerce between two individuals (me and my doctor). They can NOT force me to buy insurance if I would rather pay cash directly to my physician.

Re:Obviously

[nbauman]

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113618
The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate
Einer Elhauge, J.D.
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:e1January 5, 2012

Others argue that the Constitution's framers could not possibly have envisioned a congressional power to force purchases. However, in 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. In 1792, Congress enacted a law mandating that all able-bodied citizens obtain a firearm. This history negates any claim that forcing the purchase of insurance or other products is unprecedented or contrary to any possible intention of the framers.

Re:Obviously

[hey!]

I would be very surprised if ObamaCare even made it into THOMAS.

Be surprised then. Both The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the earlier House version called The Affordable Health Care for America Act (subsequently amended into an entirely different bill) are in there. (And apropos of TFA, trying to find those bills then extract a stable URL is a pan because the UI appends session specific data to query result URLs).

But it turns out there's a good reason why you might have the impression that Obama was secretive about the health insurance reform bill.

Keep in mind that when it came to health insurance reform the political game had three sides. The Democrats in Congress wanted to pass the most ambitious reform bill they could manage. The White House wanted a bill big enough allow them to say they delivered on reform promises but not so big Obama face the kind of shit storm Clinton faced when he tried to do insurance reform. The Republicans wanted to force Obama and the House Democrats through the same political meat grinder they put Clinton through in the 1990s.

Obama was inexperienced in national politics at this point. His strategy was to make a high profile call for reform, then leave it up to the House to come up with a package of specific proposals that it could pass. The intent was to get a reform bill passed without staking too much White House credibility on the specifics, and not to give opponents a political punching bag before the details of the actual bill had been worked out. This was a miscalculation. The Republicans were able to attack straw men proposals like death panels, bolstered by the lack of political leadership from the White House. And by leaving the specifics up to the House, Obama got a bill that was a lot more ambitious and politically risky than he wanted (source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/health/policy/21reconstruct.html). It was also some 70 billion dollars more expensive than he wanted (source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34753.html).

The House Democrats, for their part, based their proposals on Romney's Massachusetts plan, which in turn was based on Bob Dole's Republican alternative to Clinton's reform plans. While this would seem to be a politically safe move, the lack of leadership from the White House meant they ended up taking the political damage for a much more radical government takeover of health insurance, while at the same time alienating their base for *not* doing that.

In the end Republicans were able to gain a significant political victory in Congress and and advantageous position against Obama at the price of enacting their own health care plan from the mid 1990s.

Re:Obviously

[geekoid]

"NOT the Congress."

wrong.
Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

How is it not general welfare?

And lets no forget that some of our founding fathers went on to create a government health care program for some workers.
I don't see how anyone can look at that and the say they didn't want the government to be able to do that.

I wish there was a way to make the people who use the word socialism actually learn what that word means.

Do you mean market socialist? economic socialists? do you actual mean Marxisms? independent socialist? Utopian socialists?

Do you mean state joint ownership of companies? Or do you just hear that work on Fox when the are spoon feeding you what to think and assume it = 'bad'

The pubs do thing that can be considered economic and market socialism. SO maybe you should start to think for yourself and read outside your echo chamber of stupid?

Seems like a problem that could be fixed...

[Covalent]

THOMAS may only allow 1 bill at a time, but there are only so many bills before Congress. Download them one at a time and make an external database. Host that site yourself.

The government SHOULD do this, but if they refuse, simply go around them. This is how governments should always be treated: Encouraged when useful, bypassed when not.

Re:Seems like a problem that could be fixed...

[buchner.johannes]

THOMAS may only allow 1 bill at a time, but there are only so many bills before Congress. Download them one at a time and make an external database. Host that site yourself.

It would be nice to see a git-tree of legislations (revision history, diffs, who wrote what line when). I'm not expecting governments to do that, but it might be insightful and interesting.

Re:Seems like a problem that could be fixed...

[wireloose]

I don't see it as a big issue, either. The original article and the repost here are all FUD. If you read the bill, the congressional concerns are that the legislative data is downloaded intact and authenticated. They seem to be concerned that there is no way to lock an XML file in a manner similar to a PDF, which is already a common format used by much of the federal government. There is also concern about certificates. And there is language about the costs of developing a system. It's all in the bill itself, pages 17 and 18.

http://appropriations.house.gov/UploadedFiles/LEGBRANCH-FY13-FULLCOMMITTEEREPORT.pdf

Obviously, the biggest issue is that detractors for each party will modify downloaded bills to meet their own political agendas and mudslinging goals. I would prefer to see this done correctly, too.

Re:Seems like a problem that could be fixed...

[anagama]

That would surely require a constitutional amendment.

Hardly. It would just require our silent acquiescence.

Like how Obama has normalized Bush's radical policies of due process free detention, and has gone a step further with his policy of due process free execution. I mean, if your willing to let the executive branch on its own and in secret be the "due process" in the phrase "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law," then there is absolutely nothing the president can't do because executing American citizens without trial is as big as it gets.

Obama has been the worst thing to happen to freedom and liberty ever -- at least when GWB was doing the things Obama does, Democrats pretended to care and push back. Now they just silently acquiesce, or worse, actively support the constitutional destruction they once opposed (for instance Marty Lederman.

As a liberal, I hate to say it, but we'd be better off with a freak like Santorum as president, who basically promised war with Iran, because then perhaps the Democrats would go back to pretending to care about peace and freedom, and fight back against all this crap. With Obama in the office for another four years though, the damage to civil liberties and freedom will be immense because Democrats will just sit on their hands and let it continue to happen.

House Committee on Appropriations

[SirGarlon]

Since the author of TFA was too lazy to Google for this and paste in a hyperlink, here is the current membership of the House Committee on Appropriations. If one of these jackass^H^H^H^H fine public servants represents your district, you might want to let him/her know what you think of this report.

Git

[QuantumRiff]

I know there are all sorts of craziness for bills, but wouldn't something like a Git repository be ideal? that way, you can have the hash of the exact version of the bill your voting on, so the people know stuff wasn't 'slipped in' before it becomes law. Oh, wait, that is probably a 'feature'

Re:Opacity in government

[digitalsolo]

Sorry, but you're delusional if you don't think that BOTH parties are all for removing public opinion and scrutiny from what they're doing.

Troll Headline and Summary

[sycodon]

Let's try a more reasonable one...

"The House Appropriations Committee is considering holding off on modernizing THOMAS until the system "owners" finalize the specifications."

It is entirely reasonable to put a hold on a project until everyone knows what it's going to be and buys off on the changes.

I am pretty sure that the majority of people on Slashdot agree that to dive into a project that will undoubtedly be large and expensive and is highly visible without nailing down the details first is irresponsible and a recipe for failure.

Re:Troll Headline and Summary

[sycodon]

I forgot to mention that there is no discussion of taking THOMAS offline pending the upgrade.

What's really going on...

[sohmc]

I personally want to have the ability to read any bill that has been introduced. THOMAS is a good system, but horribly outdated. It could be made so much better. But we make do with what we have.

Improvements to the system should be that the database is updated in real-time, or at least as close to real-time as possible. There is no reason why this shouldn't be possible.

My guess, however, is that reps want not to be able to be accountable for their votes. Not many representatives have easy access to their voting record on their official web site. I know my old rep did (Frank Wolf) but my current (Jim Moran) does not. While the information can be found on THOMAS, it adds an additional step.

I know a few months ago, DC Counsel put an unpopular bill available online for comment. It was passed and when it finally it the news, there was outcry. The counsel said, "But you had a chance to comment." The problem was that they hid the bill on their website in a rarely browsed section, obfuscated, and ultimately in a place where no one would think to look. Stepping aside the fact that the news should have picked this up before it was voted on, the fact is that the DC Counsel followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

Every politician must be not be trusted, even if they are from "your party" or even if you voted for the guy. The framers had this in mind when writing the Constitution.

The thing that saddens me is that the original intentions of the Founding Fathers has long since gone: a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. I don't see this changing anytime soon.