2019 House FSGG Approps Bill and Transparency

On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee favorably reported the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for FY 2019, which contains a few transparency-related measures and a few omissions. (Bill as reported; Committee Report as reported). I’ll address a few of the items:

Central website for Congressional Budget Justifications
No direct funding for Oversight.Gov
DATA Act/ USASpending.gov Implementation
Undermining Civil Liberties Oversight
New Technology Investments
Pushing SEC and Open Corporate Data
Preventing Easy Tax Filing

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Recs on the House’s Harassment Bill

In early December, we shared our recommendations on how Congress should address harassment. Since then, the Committee on House Administration has published a draft reform bill — the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 Reform Act — and today we are publishing our recommendations on how that bill should be further strengthened. We expect the underlying legislation will be shortly enacted into law.

Members of Congress and their staff are making a serious effort to grapple with the immediate issue of reforming how these claims are handled. Perhaps future legislation will address some of the problems in the House Ethics Committee itself, and also look at how Congress can proactively prevent these problems from arising instead of dealing with them one-at-a-time or after-the-fact.

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Thoughts on Harassment in Congress and Reform of the Congressional Accountability Act

Today the House of Representatives held its second hearing on the issue of sexual harassment in Congress, focusing on the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, the law that created the framework through which harassment and other congressional workplace issues are addressed.

The House and Senate recently passed resolutions requiring sexual harassment training, and the House is exploring whether it should do more. Rep. Speier has introduced legislation to reform the CAA, H.R. 4396, although she has said it does not go far enough.

I have some thoughts on how Congress can deal with the sexual harassment issue and other forms of discrimination as well. Continue reading “Thoughts on Harassment in Congress and Reform of the Congressional Accountability Act” →

A Small Step Towards A Better House of Representatives

Today the Committee on House Administration took a small but important step to restore the House of Representatives as an effective legislative and oversight body. It voted unanimously to increase funding for each permanent committee — with four committees receiving a double-digit percentage increase.

The legislative branch is appropriated 0.1% of the federal budget to oversee the entire federal government, with much of that going towards non-legislative functions like security and facilities. Congress is woefully underfunded to perform its legislative, oversight, and representational duties, and that has undermined its ability to serve as a check on the executive branch. Continue reading “A Small Step Towards A Better House of Representatives” →

The House Rules Should be Publicly Available in Advance of Their Adoption

At the start of the 115th Congress, there was a fight over whether the Office of Congressional Ethics should continue its existence. I won’t get into the merits of the disagreement here (although I’ve written about it elsewhere), but how it occurred is interesting.

The Office of Congressional Ethics is one of the many offices and agencies created by the rules of the House of Representatives, which are adopted on the first day of the new Congress. The House Rules are contained in a simple resolution, and that resolution usually is released to the public at most 24 hours before the vote, and sometimes with even less notice. At the start of the 115th Congress, the Republican Conference did not finalize the proposed rules until the night before they were to be considered by the House, and the full text didn’t leak out in full until the day of the vote.

More or less, this is the general practice of both parties, which is neither transparent nor helpful to the deliberative process. And yet, bills and joint resolutions were publicly available online for 3 days in advance of when they were voted on, just as the House rules require. What was going on? Continue reading “The House Rules Should be Publicly Available in Advance of Their Adoption” →

Experts Call on Senate to Stabilize Committee Staff

October 18, 2016

Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Majority Whip Cornyn, Democratic Leader Reid, and Democratic Whip Durbin:

The United States Senate is an institution rooted in history and tradition. Its long serving members and staff are a repository of policy expertise that serve as a counterweight to an often over-assertive executive branch. We encourage the Senate to continue to implement its rule on committee staff, Rule XXVII, in a way that reinforces one of the Senate’s key strengths: its committees.

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Staff Designees on the House Appropriations Committee

Earlier today I tweeted a request for evidence that members of the House Appropriations Committee used to be granted staff designees — staffers paid by the committee that are chosen by and serve the individual members of the committee — but that the designees are being phased out. The following is evidence of that practice. Continue reading “Staff Designees on the House Appropriations Committee” →

Report from the 2016 Legislative Data & Transparency Conference

Today the House of Representatives’ Committee on House Administration hosted its fifth annual Legislative Data & Transparency Conference in the U.S. Capitol. The Conference brought together staff from House and Senate and legislative support offices, civil society advocates, technologists, overseas legislatures, and featured a speech by House Speaker Paul Ryan. More than 150 people attended, with more participating online.

There’s too much to recap from the conference — my notes, taken in real-time, are online, as is a video of the proceedings — but this blogpost will focus on the highlights. Once again, the most important aspect of the conference was that it brought together all the internal and external stakeholders to work together, announce progress, celebrate advances, and educate one another. It was a tremendous success. Continue reading “Report from the 2016 Legislative Data & Transparency Conference” →

Making Congress Slightly More Capable: Appropriators OK COLAs for House Personal Office Staff

In a heartening development for anyone who cares about Congress as an institution, today the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee agreed by voice vote to an amendment offered by Rep. Farr (D-CA) to increase funding for member personal offices by 1.5%. This modest increase will help provide funds that can be used to give staff a long-deserved cost of living adjustment.

Here is the bill considered by the committee and the committee report. The text of the amendment is not yet available. We submitted testimony to the committee with a number of recommendations for action. Continue reading “Making Congress Slightly More Capable: Appropriators OK COLAs for House Personal Office Staff” →

House Publishes Its Rules, Jefferson’s Manual, & More Online as Structured Data

Today the Government Publishing Office published the House Manual — which contains Rules of the House of Representatives, Jefferson’s Manual, and other important legislative documents — online in a structured data format on GitHub. GPO did so pursuant to direction from the House Rules Committee, which was acting in accordance with the rules package passed at the beginning of the 114th Congress, which declares:

The House shall continue efforts to broaden the availability of legislative documents in machine readable formats in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress in furtherance of the institutional priority of improving public availability and use of legislative information produced by the House and its committees.

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