Open Congress : Blog

Contact Congress Today to #FreeTHOMAS

2012-05-17T16:43:00Z

Quick call-to-action – today, Friday May 18th at 9:30 am 11am ET (changed, per Daniel Schuman’s photo – ed.), the Legislative Branch Subcommittee is holding a markup of a major appropriations bill. This is a crucial window of opportunity to compel the out-of-touch gatekeeepers at the Library of Congress and the members of Congress who oversee them to make public data open to the public in full. Background on OC Blog: our campaign is to #FreeTHOMAS now.

Click here to email your senators and representative in favor of open government data today. We’ve seeded the Message Builder with some suggested talking points; feel free to add your personal testimony about why you think our nation’s massively important legislative data ought to be, you know, open to the public it affects (and which paid for it).

In coalition with our #opengov allies at the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack and others, we’ll keep pushing on a number of fronts to liberate public data:

Everyone reading this – please write your members of Congress above to raise the issue of legislative transparency. Spread the word w/ our #FreeTHOMAS hashtag.

If your rep. is on the Legislative Approps. Subcommittee, please visit our whip count page and record that you have contacted them. The 8 reps. on the subcommittee are: Rep. Sanford Bishop [D, GA-2], Rep. Ken Calvert [R, CA-44], Rep. Ander Crenshaw [R, FL-4], Rep. Jo Ann Emerson [R, MO-8], Rep. Michael Honda [D, CA-15], Rep. Steven LaTourette [R, OH-14], Rep. David Price [D, NC-4], and Rep. Dennis Rehberg [R, MT-0]. Contacting these members is particularly important, but, again, this is a national issue so we’re asking everyone to contact their senators and rep. about this.

Employees & directors at the Library of Congress – there has been pitifully little progress or communication since our good-faith meeting this past February in the Capitol. We demand access to public legislative data in timely, machine-readable formats – and most of all, in bulk. It’s preposterously past-time. We need it for OpenCongress; the entire #opengov, #opendata ecosystem needs it; media & journalists & bloggers could use it; it’s a sound fundamental principle of accountability & access to information.

There are zero compelling arguments against OpenGovData for THOMAS. It’s technically straightforward (and as you know, you have our help & collaboration). The only thing blocking it, as far as what the LoC can control, is institutional inertia & bureacratic foot-dragging. Totally weird & preposterous that the LoC is so intransigent on this common-sense #opengov #opendata issue (with virtually no arguments against it other than organizational unresponsiveness & lack of will). Conference attendees, we call you to pressure the LoC to start moving in this direction: bulk access first, legislative XML second, open API third, libre data by default fourth (or first).

Hundreds of thousands of OC visitors want real-time bill & vote & issue data every month, as do our 300,000 MyOC registered users (who could use it for deeper research & social sharing), and the millions more people searching for basic information about Congress around the open Web. We’ve provided more than enough compelling testimony, academic research, and peer-reviewed evidence of public demand & use case propositions & value generated (incl. economic benefits), and over three months later, you’ve refused to take action. See, for example, testimony from GovTrack (GovTrack users want better transparency from Congress, we co-sign Josh’s points) and Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Policy Counsel. This lack of access & lack of momentum towards access is unacceptable to the OC community. It’s mid-2012, we still don’t have #opengovdata, so we don’t have #opengov in America.

Questions, feedback? Email me: david at opencongress, or davidmooreppf on AIM or Skype, and see our #FreeTHOMAS community wiki whip count page for more background.

Yochai Benkler: Blueprint for Democratic Participation

2012-05-10T11:07:00Z

This video presentation, by Prof. Yochai Benkler of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is one of the best articulations I’ve ever seen of the meaning of “participatory politics”.

Please watch it in full & share it: Blueprint for Democratic Participation.

(We’d embed it here for handiness, but alas, no such sharing enabled by the host site, unless you subscribe for a membership, but that’s all right. We’ll be talking about this extensively & excitedly in the months to come.)

Prof. Benkler gave the speech last week Thursday, May 3rd, at the Guardian US Activate NYC Summit. (Great lineup of heavy-hitter thought leaders, compliments to Guardian US team & their Open Editor, Amanda Michel.) The presentation builds on his ongoing academic research into the stop- #SOPA movement for #netfreedom that peaked last fall through Jan.-Feb. 2012, and is ongoing.

Which in turn, builds on his ‘alpha’ version of the speech from the Truthiness conference in March 2012 at Harvard, link to YT video, which mentions OpenCongress’ role in the netroots advocacy at approx. 12:52 in. More background info on why this is so important to us – on Feb. 8th, Donny & I wrote this recap for the OC Blog of what happened in and around American Censorship Day, Jan. 18th, the biggest-ever day of traffic & engagement on OpenCongress to protest #SOPA. Very proud to be part of the defenders of the open Web.

Back to the above-linked Yochai video – absolutely vital to watch in its entirety – I was fortunate enough to attend the Guardian conference and was overwhelmed with how sweepingly & compellingly this talk captures our organization’s mission. It’s a highly-practical empirical case study of how the open Web & p2p networks can “filter up” the most useful & current info, instantiating the public interest through the semi-coordinated actions of a variety of entities, from non-profits to tech watchdogs to mass-market web services.

(Left – screenshot of SOPA bill profile page on OC, of course, with all the info we aggregate, non-partisan editorial context and free engagement tools, all in a user-friendly Web interface. Plus – ability to email your members of Congress!)

Of course I can’t speak officially for his timeline, but Prof. Benkler said he’s continuing to iterate his lecture, so final version to-come in a couple months. (Disclosure – Yochai is on the advisory council of the non-profit Sunlight Foundation, the founding & primary supporter of OpenCongress since we launched in 2007. But Yochai has no affiliation with our non-profit, the Participatory Politics Foundation, we’re just friendly & supportive & have admired his work since his book The Wealth of Networks in ’06.)

After a brief intro ad on the Fora video service, Prof. Benkler’s presentation is about 15 min. long, with OpenCongress appearing as a leading resource for understanding the legislation itself, social wisdom around it, and an open hub for activism about 5 min. in. The video also highlights, with significant focus & weight, the positive role in encouraging netroots activism from our sibling 501©4 non-profit organization, Fight For the Future, working to defend online freedom in coalition with American Censorship (of which PPF was a founding member) & the brand-new Internet Defense League (count PPF in as well, of course).

The Guardian summarizes in their blog-style write-up: "Yochai Benkler, co-director of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, followed with a detailed analysis of the SOPA/PIPA debate and how the way internet users altered the decision making process offers ‘a unique insight into the dynamics of what the future of democratic participation could become’.

Don’t miss the arc of Yochai’s presentation and its major findings on “information backbones” (fact-checking false memes & filtering-up #realitybased discourse fluidly) – so please watch the whole thing & embrace (not uncritically, but hopefully) the future of the open Web as the greatest-yet communication medium between humans for community organizing & democratic participation (if we can retain a foundation of net neutrality & mitigate corporate gatekeeper influence & commercial oligarchical erosion) – but allow me to loosely transcribe Prof. Benkler’s summarizing conclusion, if he doesn’t mind ::

The networked public sphere is composed of layers. There are the traditional media organizations and they continue to play a role, but interestingly, in this dimension they are not in a privileged position. They are complemented by blogs that allow particularly engaged & knowledgeable individuals… to play substantial roles. We see the tech media, not at all political, playing a critical role. We see traditional NGOs also playing a large role as info brokers & sources of education, and amazingly enough, over 3 dozen special purpose action sites that are set up specifically to find a way to block the legislation… one or two of them stick, and they move forward, and they stop this piece of legislation.

Together creating a tapestry that is in fact the nature of the networked public sphere. No, not everyone is a pamphleteer, but we’re also not falling off a cliff. What you see is a complex relationship between NGOS & commercial organizations, between V.C.’s & activists, b/w traditional media & online media, between political media left & right and tech media, all weaving together a model of actually looking, learning, mobilizing for action, and blocking [SOPA]. This, ideally, is the shape of the networked public sphere. – Prof. Yochai Benkler

(Left – our OC wiki community project to whip the Senate against PIPA. Help us bring this feature to any & every bill in the U.S. Congress! Free & open for everyone.)

My hope & expectation is that Prof. Benkler’s latest speech on networked activism will become as influential & central to the #nonprofit, #publicbenefit, #opengov movement as Prof. Larry Lessig’s seminal lectures on systemic corruption. (Not to mention other #opengov legal-academic open-tech thought leaders like Profs. Susan Crawford, Beth Noveck, and many more.) I am optimistic that, as the implications of the stop-SOPA movement sink in further and as our #opengov movement matures to fight the #systemiccorruption of the federal legislative process, PPF will find additional not-for-profit funding support to enhance our free & open-source online organizing features. Please read & circulate our non-profit funding prospectus – support our public-interest work. My compliments to Prof. Benkler for his thoughtful research. we’re thrilled to be a part of it and hope to contribute analytics & #opendata & open-source code from OC however helpful.

To reiterate, Prof. Benkler’s vision is core to PPF’s founding mission – that the open Web can & will generate networks for peer-to-peer watchdogging of our elected officials, mitigating systemic corruption in government and improving political outcomes for the public benefit. For example, the free OCv3 online organizing features we released last summer can help groups engage with the bills & issues they’re tracking at the federal level. Our proposals to turn OpenCongress into a two-way platform for continual, reciprocal communication with elected officials will result in a more deliberative & participatory democracy. (More to come on the real-world distinctions, as we see them from a tech-booster perspective, on representative vs. parliamentary vs. participatory vs. direct vs. deliberative democracy – and indeed, participatory politics more broadly as we foresee it.)

More practically, with more support we can turn OpenCongress into a more powerful open platform for advocacy at the community level in Congressional districts. (And at the state & local levels, our next major project, OpenGovernment, seeks to replicate the popular OC model of transparency & free engagement tools.) We’ve written before on the OC Blog about how this model of D.C. based public-interest legislative / policy experts (e.g. our allies Public Knowledge, EFF, Free Press & others) combined with tech-media press (e.g. TechDirt, Alex Howard [@digiphile] & O’Reilly Radar) and vital online communities (e.g. Reddit’s new Watching Congress subreddit) will result in ever-more meaningful accountability in the legislative process.

It won’t necessarily reform the system immediately, but as we saw with SOPA, we were in fact able to come together to stop the worst internet legislation in history. We’re fighting for comprehensive reforms towards a fundamentally more participatory democratic system in which we don’t have to be starting from such an uninformed, closed-off position in crafting legislation. We can do more to inform & tweak Congress on bills & issues before, during and after individual legislative items are crafted & circulated & introduced. This January, our successful wiki community project to stop SOPA & PIPA proved the public demand & general use case for our proposed new features on OpenCongress to “whip Congress”, for which we seek non-profit funding support for open-source Web development. Each of these major bills & issue areas in Congress can be subject to many overlapping stop-SOPA-style grassroots campaigns – whether it’s catastrophic climate degradation or immigration reform or freedom of association or reproductive rights or civil liberties or net neutrality or economic inequality or electoral reform – with a bit more funding to develop campaign features on OpenCongress.

Major donors & philanthropists, please contact me anytime to hear more about our plans for enabling SOPA-esque campaigns for public accountability, we need your help to build them out and offer them to the public on the open Web: david at ppolitics dot org. Help us facilitate more stop-SOPA-style engagement on OpenCongress – around the economy, education, health care, the environment, immigration, technology, and any issue imaginable. We’re working on a healthy democratic future in the networked public sphere. Help us build more positive networks, just as Prof. Benkler describes.

(Screenshot of photo above from Fora.tv video for the Guardian US Activate summit.)

New NDAA Would Give the Military Clandestine Cyberwar Powers

2012-05-08T16:18:00Z

Remember the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its language “affirming” the military’s power to indefinitely detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge or trial? Well, the 2013 NDAA bill begins its journey through the legislative process tomorrow morning in the House Armed Services Committee; take a look at what power they’ll be trying to affirm for the Defense Department this time around:

SEC.941 MILITARY ACTIVITIES IN CYBERSPACE.

Section 954 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Public Law 112–81; 125 Stat. 1551) is amended to read as follows:

‘‘SEC. 954. MILITARY ACTIVITIES IN CYBERSPACE.

‘‘(a) AFFIRMATION.—Congress affirms that the Secretary of Defense is authorized to conduct military activities in cyberspace.

‘‘(b) AUTHORITY DESCRIBED.—The authority referred to in subsection (a) includes the authority to carry out a clandestine operation in cyberspace—

‘‘(1) in support of a military operation pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (50 U.S.C. 1541 note; Public Law 107-40) against a target located outside of the United States; or

‘‘(2) to defend against a cyber attack against an asset of the Department of Defense.

‘‘(c ) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the authority of the Secretary of Defense to conduct military activities in cyberspace.’’.

Primary source here for now. This language is from a just-released chairman’s mark that is not yet available on OC.

Congress has already given the Department of Defense some cyberwar powers. Under current law, the DoD can conduct “offensive operations in cyberspace” at the discretion of the President and in the context of a declared war. The new language would expand the DoD’s cyberwar powers by authorizing clandestine operations, removing the requirement for presidential approval, and expanding the authority beyond declared war by authorizing cyberwar actions response to cyberattacks against the military.

The Week Ahead in Congress

2012-05-07T12:34:00Z

Remember the harsh budget trigger the government was supposed to face as a reprecussion of the deficit supercommittee’s epic failure? Yeah, well, Congress this week is going to start working on a way to avoid that.

Under a series of bills to be voted on in the House this week, the budget trigger would be revised to eliminate $600 billion in scheduled defense cuts over the next decade and increase cuts to social programs. According to the AP, one quarter of the new spending cuts would “come from programs directly benefiting the poor, such as Medicaid, food stamps, the Social Services Block Grant, and a child tax credit claimed by working immigrants.”

The Democratic Senate probably won’t agree to all those cuts, but canceling the scheduled defense cuts has more bipartisan support and could very well make it through.

Below is a full look at the congressional schedules for the week. House first:

THE WEEKLY WHIP: FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012

First Vote Of The Week: Monday 6:30 p.m.
Last Vote Predicted: Thursday 3:00 p.m.

MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012
On Monday, the House will meet at 2:00 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.

Suspensions (7 Bills)

H.R. 4097 – John F. Kennedy Center Reauthorization Act of 2012 (Rep. Mica – Transportation and Infrastructure)

H.Con.Res. 117 – Concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service (Rep. Denham – Transportation and Infrastructure)

H.Con.Res. 105 – Authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for an event to celebrate the birthday of King Kamehameha (Rep. Hanabusa – House Administration)

H.Con.Res. 118 – Concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the District of Columbia Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run (Rep. Norton – Transportation and Infrastructure)

Concur in the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2297 – To promote the development of the Southwest waterfront in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes (Rep. Norton – Oversight and Government Reform)

S. 1302 – A bill to authorize the Administrator of General Services to convey a parcel of real property in Tracy, California, to the City of Tracy (Sen. Boxer – Oversight and Government Reform)

TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2012 AND THE BALANCE OF THE WEEK
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business with last votes expected no later than 3:00 p.m. On Friday, no votes are expected in the House. **Members are advised that the GOP Leadership has announced that votes may occur after 7:00 p.m. when the House is considering Appropriations bills, and that the House may be voting late into the evening on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Suspensions (2 Bills)

H.R. 4133 – United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, as amended (Rep. Cantor – Foreign Affairs)

H.R. 2072 – Securing American Jobs Through Exports Act of 2011, as amended (Rep. Gary Miller (CA) – Financial Services)

H.R. 5326 – Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes (Rep. Wolf – Appropriations) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. __ – Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012 (Rep. Ryan (WI) – Budget/Agriculture/ Energy and Commerce/Financial Services/Judiciary/Oversight and Government Reform/ Ways and Means) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. 4966 – Sequester Replacement Act of 2012 (Rep. Ryan (WI) – Budget/Rule) (Subject to a Rule)

And here’s the Senate plan:

Senate Floor Schedule for Monday, May 7, 2012

The Senate stands in adjournment under the provisions of S.Con.Res.43, the adjournment resolution.

The Senate will convene at 2:00pm on Monday, May 7, 2012. Following the prayer and pledge, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S.2343, the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act.

At 4:30pm, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider the following items:

- Executive Calendar #508 Jacqueline H. Nguyen, of CA, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit

- Executive Calendar #568 Kristine Gerhard Baker, of AR, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas

- Executive Calendar #569 John Z. Lee, IL, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois

with 60 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley or their designees. Upon the use or yielding back of time (at approximately 5:30pm), the Senate will conduct up to 3 roll call votes on the Nguyen, Baker and Lee nominations. It is possible the Baker and Lee nominations will be confirmed by voice vote.

As a reminder to all Senators, on Thursday, April 26th, cloture was filed on the motion to proceed to S.2343, the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act. By consent, the roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S.2343 will be at 12:00pm on Tuesday, May 8th.

If the Senate does not receive a message from the House that it has adopted S.Con.Res.43, the Senate will convene on the following dates at the following times for pro forma sessions only, with no business conducted:

- Monday, April 30, at 10:30am

- Thursday, May 3, at 8:30am

White House Indicates Support for Cybersecurity Bill That Includes CISPA-Like Language

2012-05-04T12:55:00Z

After indicating that they may veto the House’s cybersecurity bill (CISPA) over privacy concerns, the Obama Administration is reaffirming its support for a competing cybersecurity bill in the Senate, the Lieberman-Collins “Cybersecurity Act of 2012.” Problem is, the Lieberman-Collins bill is nearly as bad on privacy as CISPA.

During a taping for C-SPAN this morning, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt indicated that while he would still recommend that President Obama veto CISPA, the Administration is now pushing for passage in the Senate of the Lieberman-Collins bill, mainly because of a package of regulations it contains for critical infrastructure, like the electrical grid and transportation systems, that is not in CISPA.

While the Lieberman-Collins bill is a much bigger bill than CISPA, one thing they have in common is a provision that would give internet service providers and web companies preemptive legal immunity for sharing information about their users with the government without a warrant. Title VII of Lieberman-Collins purports to establish “affirmative authority” for any private entity to monitor their users and share information regarding broadly-defined “cybersecurity threats” with the government. The bill explicitly states that the judicial due diligence and privacy safeguards of existing surveillance laws (Notwithstanding chapter 119, 121, or 206 of title 18, United States Code, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.), and the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 151 et seq.), any private entity may…).

While the goal of cybersecurity may be different, the Lieberman-Collins bill, like SOPA and PIPA (and CISPA), is part of a broad movement by a bipartisan group in Congress and some corporations to advance legislation creating special carve-outs to the rule of law as it applies to the internet. The Obama Administration’s position on these bills is a little conflicted, but I think it’s safe to say that they’re main concern right now, with election season in full swing, is optics, and they seem to want to look tough on cybersecurity.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D, NV] is eager to pass a cybersecurity bill. In a recent floor speech, Reid named cybersecurity legislation as something they would be taking up in the next work session (i.e. the one beginning when they come back from recess on May 7th), and he has previously stated that the Lieberman-Collins bill is the one he will be bringing up. The bill has bipartisan co-sponsorship and, unless the internet gets active, looks likely to pass.

CISPA Rushed to Passage

2012-04-27T12:53:00Z

In a snap vote last night, the House of Representatives passed the controversial Cyberintelligence Sharing and Protection Act, more commonly known as CISPA. The final roll call was 248-168, with most of the Republicans voting in favor and most of the Democrats voting against.

According to the bill’s supporters, the idea is to make it easier for corporations and the government to share information about potential cybersecurity issues. But the bill’s text goes much farther than that. It would allow web companies to share virtually any information about their users with the government, without a court order. No prior privacy laws would apply.

Before the bill passed, an amendment was added to expand how the government can use shared information. Mike Masnick at the Tech Dirt blog explains:

Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.

Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.

The bill is under a veto threat from the White House, and the bill fell short of the 2/3rds majority that would be needed for an override. It’s unclear whether the Senate will be taking up the bill or if the bill’s supporters will try to amend it to get the Administration to back off its veto threat.

The Week Ahead in Congress

2012-04-16T11:08:00Z

With taxes fresh on everyone’s mind, Congress is returning from a two-week recess today and will immediately begin voting on a series of partisan tax bills.

The first vote, which will be in the Senate, is the Democrats’ so-called “Buffet Rule” that would ensure that people who earn more than $1 million per year pay an effective 30 percent tax rate. That vote — technically on defeating a GOP filibuster on the motion to proceed — will take place this afternoon.

The second vote will happen later in the week in the House on a Republican bill to cut corporate taxes for businesses with fewer than 500 employees, regardless of the size of the company based on assets held.

The full schedules for both chambers are below. House first:

THE WEEKLY WHIP: FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012

First Vote Of The Week: Monday 6:30 p.m.
Last Vote Predicted: Thursday 3:00 p.m.

MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2012

On Monday, the House will meet at 2:00 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.

Suspensions (4 Bills)

H.R. 3001 – Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Act (Rep. Meeks – Financial Services)

H.R. 1815 – Lena Horne Recognition Act (Rep. Hastings (FL) – Financial Services)

H.R. 4040 – To provide for the award of a gold medal on behalf of Congress to Jack Nicklaus in recognition of his service to the Nation in promoting excellence and good sportsmanship in golf (Rep. Baca – Financial Services)

H.R. 2453 – Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act, as amended (Rep. Luetkemeyer – Financial Services)

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012 AND THE BALANCE OF THE WEEK

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business with last votes expected no later than 3:00 p.m. On Friday, no votes are expected in the House.

H.R. 4089 – Sportmen’s Heritage Act of 2012 (Rep. Miller (FL) – Natural Resources/Agriculture/Energy and Commerce) (Subject to Rule)

H.R. __ – Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012, Part II (Rep. Mica – Transportation and Infrastructure/Ways and Means/Natural Resources/Science, Space, and Technology/Energy and Commerce) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. 9 – Small Business Tax Cut Act (Rep. Cantor – Ways and Means) (Subject to a Rule)

And here’s the Senate schedule:

Senate Floor Schedule for Monday, April 16, 2012

Convenes: 2:00pm

Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S.2240, the Paying a Fair Share Act.

As a reminder to all Senators, cloture was filed on the motion to proceed to S.2230, the Paying a Fair Share Act on Thursday, March 29th.

At 4:30pm, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider Executive Calendar #460, Stephanie Dawn Thacker, of WV, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit with up to 60 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley or their designees.

Upon the use or yielding back of time (at approximately 5:30pm), there will be a roll call vote on confirmation of the Thacker nomination. There will then be a 2nd roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S.2230, the Paying a Fair Share Act.

If the House does not adopt S.Con.Res.38, the adjournment resolution, the Senate will also meet on the following dates at the following times in pro forma sessions only, with no business conducted:

Monday, April 2nd at 2:00pm

Thursday, April 5th at 11:00am

Monday, April 9th at 10:00am

Thursday, April 12th at 2:00pm

Free THOMAS!

2012-04-12T13:54:00Z

The Republican House leadership of the 112th Congress has shown more of a commitment to opening up the inner workings of Congress than the leaderships of the recent past. They’ve liberaized the rules on what technologies members can use, improved live video offerings of floor activity, and created a new website for accessing the texts of some bills. But on the essential issue of making the raw data of Congress available to the public in a reliable, timely and systematic fashion, they have come up far short.

The aspirations of citizens and web developers for improving American democracy through technology have far surpassed the disclosure practices of those in power. Tremendous private and non-profit sector resources have been invested in leveraging the internet for improving how Congress and the public interact, but every project has been unnecessarily hamstrung by the out-of-date data practices that Congress has been resistant to update. The internet has given rise to a grassroots, non-partisan, pro-democracy movement of tech innovators who are committed to nothing more than making American politics work better, but that movement has been stunted by gatekeepers in Congress who are invested in maintaining the system’s flaws.

Tell Congress to release their data in bulk: Click here to send a message to your representatives.

Fundamentally, the U.S. Congress has a systemic bias towards secrecy that tends to get reinforced as time goes on. Government secrecy, political partisanship, and public disillusionment feed off each other in a cycle that protects the status quo and resistants reform. It goes something like this:

Petty Partisanship — The party in the majority that controls the agenda in Congress knows that they stand to benefit by the limited accountability afforded them by the status-quo in congressional data distribution.
Secrecy — The lack of timely and complete public disclosure of congressional data means that the public only ever gets a partial view of what Congress is really doing.
Corruption — Where there are limitations on oversight, bad actors in Congress exploit the system to pass legislation that unfairly benefits their special-interest allies.
Anger and Disillusionment — Journalists manage to reveal some of the corruption in Congress, and resentment of the system grows. Congressional approval is at an all-time low.
Limited Public Engagement — Without the resources to effect the process, people stop paying attention to Congress, stop communicating with their Sens. and Reps., and stop voting. Divisive national party politics dominate.
Broken Democracy — Congress becomes more and more beholden to special interests and campaign funders. We now have a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

The great irony in all of this is that the website Congress has put together to release information to the public, THOMAS, is named after the greatest proponent of participatory politics this country has ever had — Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson believed that it was government’s job to protect individual citizens from falling under the power of a select group of economically powerful institutions. Yet the system that now bares his name has become a ploy for maintaining an illusion of transparency while ensuring that access to information (read: power) is limited to those with the resources to secure special access.

Opening up bulk access to public data on Congress is a simple and common-sense action Congress could take right now that would be an historic achievemnt for advancing democracy and cleaning up our political system. The recommendations put forward by our colleagues at the Sunlight Foundation are easily achievable within a relatively short time frame and with little finnancial investment. If the House leadership is serious about opening up Washington, this must be their litmus test. Let this be the crowning bipartisan achievement of this otherwise gridlocked session of Congress. It just takes a few members of Congress to step up, be bold, and take on leadership for this cause.

We’re partnering with our friends at the Sunlight Foundation, Washington Watch, Govtrack, Popvox, and dozens of other organizations in calling on the House and Senate Legislative Appropriations Subcommittees to add a bulk data mandate to their appropriations bill for next year’s funding. Only 13 members serve on the subcommittees, but since this is an issue of national importance, we’re asking everyone to write to their senators and representatives to ask them to lobby their colleagues on the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee for bulk data access.

Click here to send a letter to Congress right now asking for bulk data.

If your rep. or one of your senators is on the Leislative Approps. Subcommittee, please visit our whip count page and record that you have contacted them. The 13 members on the subcommittee are: Sen. Sherrod Brown [D, OH], Sen. Lindsey Graham [R, SC], Sen. John Hoeven [R, ND], Sen. Ben Nelson [D, NE], Sen. Jon Tester [D, MT], Rep. Sanford Bishop [D, GA-2], Rep. Ken Calvert [R, CA-44], Rep. Ander Crenshaw [R, FL-4], Rep. Jo Ann Emerson [R, MO-8], Rep. Michael Honda [D, CA-15], Rep. Steven LaTourette [R, OH-14], Rep. David Price [D, NC-4], and Rep. Dennis Rehberg [R, MT-0]. Contacting these members is particularly important, but, again, this is a national issue so we’re asking everyone to contact their senators and rep. about this.

One more thing. After your write your members of Congress, can you share this on Facebook and Twitter to help raise awareness of this under-the-radar issue and get more people active on it? Here’s a message you can copy/paste:

Congress refuses to publish its legislative databases online in bulk. Tell them to #freeTHOMAS: bit.ly/Avfasj

Can you help us out?

2012-04-03T11:36:00Z

As we’ve mentioned before, we’re working with a volunteer researcher, Brady Ambler, on a survey of OpenCongress users with the goal of improving the OC user experience and to generally help us make Congress more accessible. We’re just about ready to start analyzing the data, but we need to talk to a few more site users to increase our sample size.

Do you have a few minutes to chat with Brady over the phone about how you use OpenCongress? We would really appreciate it. Just email bradyambler at gmail d0t com, and he’ll get back to you to set up a convenient time to talk. Of course, we’ll be sharing our findings publicly on this blog once we’ve wrapped this thing up. Thanks, all!

The Week Ahead in Congress

2012-03-26T11:48:00Z

The big item on the agenda this week is the House Republicans’ budget resolution for 2013. This is the Rep. Paul Ryan [R, WI] budget plan that you’ve probably been hearing about recently, and it’s basically just a political statment of the Republican party’s fiscal agenda.

The resolution calls for a range of tax cuts, new non-defense spending cuts beyond what Congress agreed to in the 2011 debt-ceiling deal, and a revamp of Medicare that includes an eventual increase in the age of eligibility. The lower tax rate on money earned from capitol gains would not be affected, which would mean that wealthy individuals would generally benefit more from the Ryan plan than middle-income and poor people.

Below is a full look at the House schedule for the week:

On Monday, the House will meet at 12:00 p.m. for Morning Hour debate and 2:00 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.

Suspensions (5 Bills)

H.R. 2779 – To exempt inter-affiliate swaps from certain regulatory requirements put in place by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as amended (Rep. Stivers – Financial Services/Agriculture)

H.R. 2682 – Business Risk Mitigation and Price Stabilization Act of 2011, as amended (Rep. Grimm – Financial Services/Agriculture)

H.R. 4014 – To amend the Federal Deposit Insurance Act with respect to information provided to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Rep. Huizenga – Financial Services)

H.R. 3298 – Homes For Heroes Act of 2011 (Rep. Al Green – Financial Services)

H.R. 4239 – Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012 (Rep. Mica – Transportation and Infrastructure/Ways and Means/Natural Resources/Science, Space, and Technology/Energy and Commerce)

TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2012
On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business.

Suspension (1 Bill)

Concur in the Senate Amendment to H.R. 3606 – Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act (Rep. Fincher – Financial Services)

H.R. 3309 – Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2012 (Rep. Walden – Energy and Commerce) (Subject to a Rule)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012 AND THE BALANCE OF THE WEEK
On Wednesday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business with last votes expected no later than 3:00 p.m. On Friday, the House is not in session.

H.Con.Res. __ – Establishing the budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2013 and setting forth appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2014 through 2022 (Rep. Ryan – Budget) (Subject to a Rule)

And here’s what we know so far about the Senate plan for the week:

Senate Floor Schedule for Monday, March 26, 2012

Convenes: 2:00pm

Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will be in morning business until 4:30pm.

Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of Calendar Order #337, S.2204, the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act with the time until 5:30pm equally divided and controlled between the Leaders or their designees.

As a reminder to all Senators, on Thursday, March 22nd, cloture was filed on the motion to proceed to S.2204, the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act and on the motion to proceed to Calendar Order #296, S.1789, the Postal Reform bill.

At approximately 5:30pm on Monday, there will be a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S.2204. If cloture is not invoked, there will be a second roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S.1789, the Postal Reform Bill.