SCN: Please, Senators, Put it on the 'Net (fwd)

[Barb Avonia Weismann]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 12:06:31 -0400
From: Gary Ruskin <gary at essential.org>
To: cong-reform at venice.essential.org
Subject: Please, Senators, Put it on the 'Net

Congressional Reform Briefings			May 19, 2000

-- Ask Senators to put key Congressional information on the Internet.

	U.S. Senators Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have set up
a website to gather ideas from the public about how to use the Internet
to improve the Federal government.  The web address is
<http://cct.georgetown.edu/development/eGov/>.

	Senators Thompson and Lieberman should start by fixing the problem in
their own backyard: the failure of the Congress to place its most useful
documents on the Internet, including the most important texts of bills,
draft committee and conference reports, a searchable database of
Congressional voting records, Congressional Research Service reports,
and much more.

	Please contact Senators Thompson and Lieberman through their new
website and urge them to put the core working documents of our Congress
on the Internet.

BACKGROUND:
Following is an op-ed from the November 30, 1999 edition of the Los
Angeles Times.

Congress Pulls the Shades on Net
By Ralph Nader and Gary Ruskin

	It's almost 2000. We're deep into the Internet Age. And it seems that
nearly everything is on the Internet, except Congress. 

	If there's one cause that the information superhighway ought to serve,
it's democracy, But, regrettably, for Congress this has become last in
line. 

	If you fire up your Web browser looking for even the most important
congressional information, chances are you won't find it. Congress has
refused for years to place many of its most useful materials on the
Internet. This is especially true regarding what our members of Congress
really do in Washington. We get mainly what they want us to know, not
what we need. 

	While individual members of Congress and congressional committees have
Web pages, those pages are packed with self-serving fluff, obfuscation
and public-relations claptrap. 

	The Library of Congress maintains the Thomas Web page
(http://thomas.loc.gov), which is great for historians. But why not also
make available the most useful, up-to-date congressional materials, so
that citizens could easily obtain the information they need to help
shape legislative efforts and participate in furthering congressional
accountability? To ask the question is to answer it. 

	Voting records are central to the democratic process. Access to them is
essential to political responsibility. But, remarkably, Congress has yet
to place on the Internet a searchable database of congressional votes,
indexed by bill name, bill subject, bill title, member name, etc. 

	Such a database would be inexpensive to produce and simple to maintain.
Currently, roll call votes are available via the Thomas Web site. That's
a start. But they aren't in a searchable database, so it is
time-consuming to compile a member's voting record from this site.
Citizens ought to be able to type in a member's name and a topic and out
would come that member's voting record on that issue. 

	If members of Congress are so proud of what they do in Washington, they
ought to make it easy for citizens to obtain their voting records. 

	Congressional Research Service reports are some of the best research
that the federal government does and provide much of the background that
Congress uses to draft our laws. Yet, in a notable backhand to
taxpayers, Congress has arranged for CRS to place about 3,400 of its
reports and products on an internal congressional intranet for use by
members of Congress and their staffs but not the public. 

	Taxpayers ought to be able to read the research that they pay for. But
citizens cannot obtain most CRS reports directly. Instead, they must
purchase them from private vendors--at high cost--or engage in the
time-consuming process of requesting a congressman to send CRS reports
to them. Often, citizens wait for weeks or months before such a request
is filled. 

	Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Reps.
Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and David Price (D-N.C.) have introduced
legislation (S393, HR 654) to place CRS reports on the Internet. But
these bills are stalled in committee. 

	Obviously, texts of bills are Congress' most important work product.
Why should high-priced lobbyists have special access to the most
important texts of bills? Congress should require that all texts of
bills be placed on the Internet as soon as they are printed or are made
available to lobbyists or members of a committee or subcommittee. The
most important texts of bills--working versions, discussion drafts,
chairmen's marks, managers' marks--are infrequently placed on the
Internet. Draft committee and conference reports, too, rarely make the
Internet. Many Washington lobbyists get paid large sums of money to
insert tiny but important provisions in committee or conference reports.
Such provisions affect the way a law is carried out, or how government
funding is distributed. Congress should place these draft reports, too,
on the Internet promptly. 

	There are lots of arguments about what, if anything, the Internet is
good for. But there is no question that the Internet is magnificent for
distributing information. Let's demand that Congress harness this
technology to inform the voters and strengthen our democracy. 

<-------op-ed ends here------->

Following is a November 30, 1999 article from Slate Magazine.
<http://slate.msn.com/netelection/entries/99-11-30_56807.asp>

How Congress Resists the Web
By Eve Gerber

The simplest way the Internet can enhance democracy is by making buried
information easily available to citizens. By putting documents of all
kinds online, agencies let in disinfecting sunlight and make themselves
accountable to the public. By and large, the federal government has made
impressive strides toward making itself Web-accessible. But there's one
big exception: the U.S. Congress. 

Congress is ostensibly fascinated with cyberspace. Fifty Web-related
bills and resolutions are pending on Capitol Hill. Over 100 members of
Congress participate in an Internet caucus.

Yet, when it comes to posting basic information about its inner
workings, Congress has been shamefully slow. The result is that it
protects the privileged status of corporate lobbyists and insulates
back-room deals from public scrutiny while fencing out concerned and
engaged citizens. 

Let's say you want to find out something about the latest draft of a
bill. You might try the home pages of the House and Senate, which link
to Capitol Hill tourism tips and member home pages.
But these sites provide scattershot coverage of legislation revisions.
Nor are the pages of the legislation's sponsors likely to help. Most of
these are filled with promotional dross. Biographical information, press
releases, and lengthy legislative accomplishment lists are complemented
by intern solicitations and flag request forms. Sen. Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., includes his recipe for Chocolate Nut Pie. 

You may get closer to what you're looking for at GPO Access, a
Government Printing Office site where citizens can download legislation
and search Congressional Record archives. The clumsy and confusing
THOMAS -- a Library of Congress site -- duplicates some of this
information. It contains bills, roll-call votes, and links to
congressional committee sites. But neither of these sites gives you the
up-to-date information that might enable you to understand how a bill is
working its way through the legislative process. 

"There is much more information online about Congress than at any time
in history," according to Jason Poblete, a spokesman for the House
Administration Committee. That is undoubtedly true,
but it's hardly a meaningful statement. There is far less information
about Congress online than there should and easily could be. Here is
what's missing and why: 

Working Drafts of Bills and Amendments. Citizens can access bills, but
working drafts are rarely posted. That's because under current policy,
THOMAS cannot post an update until the text is processed by the
Government Printing Office. The delay guarantees that lobbyists have
time to get drafts and influence the process before the general public
knows what's happening. Adam
Thierer, Internet policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, says that
"the messy nature of the legislative process makes it difficult to keep
a site up to date." But Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability
Project, a Ralph Nader-related organization that watches Congress,
asserts that committee chairmen squelch the posting of drafts because,
"If citizens figured out what was in some of these bills, there would be
public outcry against them." 

Hearing Transcripts and Statements. To find out about congressional
hearings, the curious must locate the appropriate committee site. Some
committees post opening remarks and transcripts, but the coverage is
scattershot. THOMAS publishes hearing testimony, but it often takes
months before the transcripts are "processed." While the public waits,
lobbyists purchase uncorrected transcripts from pricey transcription
agencies. Poblete counsels patience and claims that all committees will
offer video archives of hearings someday. In the meantime, Congress
could make all its committees' hearings available with the help of a few
$200 scanners. 

Congressional Research Service Reports. Congress spends over $64 million
a year on a research service that analyzes thousands of issues, from
abortion to Zambia. The reports, which are often excellent, are public
documents that the public can't easily get its hands on. Sen. Tom
Daschle, D-S.D., posts several hundred CRS reports on his site, and
members give them away in response to specific constituent requests.
Still, citizens often have to wait weeks for research that a
congressional staffer can download in seconds. As a result, commercial
services are able to make money selling bootleg copies. Penny Hill
Press, for instance, peddles CRS reports for $49 per order. Why not put
these guys out of business? Ruskin contends that Congress hoards the
reports because "members see CRS as their own fiefdom and they like the
ability to give reports as a favor to constituents." A congressional
task force is "considering" making all CRS reports public. It is
supposed to report its conclusions by the end of the year. 

Voting Records. To find out how a member voted on a particular bill,
citizens must comb through archives of roll-call votes, which are
categorized by bill number and searchable by topic. Constituents can't
search by representative name, at least at any official government site.
Ruskin argues that "easily searchable voting records are essential to
democratic accountability." Poblete says Congress is considering how to
make voting records easier to access. 

Lobbyist Disclosure Reports. These reports detail how much lobbyists are
paid to work on a particular issue and in theory what, who, and how they
lobby. They can make for very interesting reading, but to get them you
have to go in person to a little office in the Capitol. Ruskin argues
that posting the reports would allow citizens to trace patterns of
influence. Citizens are not able to access these reports online, even
though they are electronically stored. Poblete claims that the reports
will be posted as soon as Congress resolves "technical hurdles."

House, Senate, and Personal Financial Disclosure Reports. Members must
report how they spend their "representational allowances" and have to
file personal financial disclosure reports. The disclosures can be used
to ferret out wrongdoing and conflicts of interest. The data are
computerized, but for "policy reasons" the reports are not available
online. Congress is "reconsidering" whether to post them, according to
Poblete.

Five years ago, Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich promised to make important
information available online "at the same moment that it is available to
the highest-paid Washington lobbyist." That did happen, but only
once--when Congress instantaneously published the Starr Report. When it
comes to its own dirty laundry, there seems to be no such hurry. 
<-------article ends here--------->

Today's Washington Post has an article about the e-Government
initiative, "Senators Go Looking for E-Ideas."
<http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30480-2000May18.html>

The Congressional Accountability Project works to reform the U.S.
Congress.  For more information about how Congress has failed to place
its most important information on the Internet, see the Congressional
Accountability Project's website at
<http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html>.

Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the
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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html |
mailto:gary at essential.org |
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