Tracking Lobbying by Foreign Governments

In the next few months, the Justice Department’s Inspector General will release a report on lobbying by foreign powers aimed at the federal government. Unlikely lobbying by American citizens and companies, tracked by the House of Representatives and Senate, lobbying by agents of foreign powers is monitored by the Department of Justice.

The law requiring reporting by foreign lobbyists — known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA — originated in the 1930s and grew out of the concern that it’s important to know when foreign governments are trying to influence U.S. policy. It differers from domestic lobbying reporting in three important ways. Continue reading “Tracking Lobbying by Foreign Governments” →

The Constitution (Annotated) In Your Pocket

After a powerful speech by Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention, sales of pocket U.S. Constitutions have skyrocketed, becoming the second best selling book on Amazon. This is great! But the words of the Constitution are unsufficient to provide an understanding into how it has been applied by the courts over the last two centuries. That’s where the Constitution Annotated comes it.

The Constitution Annotated (aka CONAN) is a plain language explanation of the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Published by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service at the direction of Congress, CONAN provides insight into the meaning of our founding document. It also is available online as of 2013 and can downloaded as an app for your phone (iPhone) (Android is under development). Continue reading “The Constitution (Annotated) In Your Pocket” →

Is The House Intelligence Committee Out of Balance?

Yesterday’s appointment of representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) to the House Intelligence Committee may push the Committee’s membership out of balance — it no longer has a member who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, as required by the Rules of the House of Representatives.

Because of its coordinating role, House Rules require the Committee to include at least one member who also serves on the following committees: Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Judiciary. Rep. Castro replaces Illinois representative Luis Gutierrez, who resigned on May 26th and was the only member of the Committee cross-seated on Judiciary. The House of Representatives apparently waived the rules’ requirement when it agreed to his appointment. Continue reading “Is The House Intelligence Committee Out of Balance?” →

11 Simple Things to Improve Senate Accountability

Democratic members of the U.S. Senate recently announced “We the People,” a legislative package the New York Times describes as intended to “hit campaign contributions, lobbying laws and other accountability issues.” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton hailed the legislation, which is unlikely to pass under Republican control, as “ a strong package of reforms to help restore our democracy and break the grip of wealthy special interests in Washington.”

We applaud any effort to address undue influence and the role of money in politics. (We also think the package of ambitious proposals should have included public financing.) While the provisions in the legislation may prove hard to move even in a Democratic-controlled Senate, we offer eleven ideas to which nearly every senator should be able to say yes. Continue reading “11 Simple Things to Improve Senate Accountability” →

House Passes Historic FOIA Bill, Obama Expected to Sign

Today the House of Representatives passed the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, which passed the Senate in March; President Obama indicated through a spokesman he will sign the measure. [Update: President Obama signed it into law on June 30.] The legislation is the second major transparency bill of the Obama administration — the other is the DATA Act, a federal spending transparency bill. The legislation will become law before July 4th, 2016, the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the original Freedom of Information Act.

The FOIA bill has four major provisions. First, it writes into law a presumption of openness, so future Dick Cheney’s cannot use implausible excuses to withhold information. Second, the bill establishes a 25-year sunset on the administration’s ability to invoke the “deliberative process” privilege to withhold information. Third, it strengthens the FOIA ombudsman. Finally, it pushes FOIA into the digital age through the creation of an online portal. Continue reading “House Passes Historic FOIA Bill, Obama Expected to Sign” →

House of Reps’ Spending Info Is Now Online as Data

Yesterday the House of Representatives began publishing its spending data online as a spreadsheet (and continued publishing it online as a PDF file).

As Josh Tauberer explains in Open Government Data: The Book, the compilation of spending data, known as the Statements of Disbursements, includes “how much congressmen and their staffs are paid, what kinds of expenses they have, and who they are paying for those services.” While it does not contain all the nitty-gritty details, the Disbursements data can tell you a lot about the health and activities of Congress.

Yesterday’s publication includes the full dataset for the first quarter of 2016 in a 17.8 MB CSV file, and a smaller 502 KB summary file in CSV format. The information is also published as a PDF, which it has been since November 2009. Continue reading “House of Reps’ Spending Info Is Now Online as Data” →

House Appropriators Turn Back Public Access to CRS Reports, but Not Without a Fight

Today the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee debated two amendments that would make Congressional Research Service reports more equitably available to the public. The effort to release the reports was led by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA).

Here is the bill considered by the committee and the committee report. We submitted testimony to the committee with a number of recommendations for action and we strongly support public access to CRS reports. Continue reading “House Appropriators Turn Back Public Access to CRS Reports, but Not Without a Fight” →

How to Give Your Job Announcements Legs

I run a small, free, opengov jobs list with about 700 participants. On the public-facing side, it’s a Google group that anyone can join to learn about or post jobs. On the back-end, I monitor 50+ organizational websites to alert me when a new job is posted. Most organizations are truly awful in how they post their job announcements.

Here are some tips to help people find your announcement: Continue reading “How to Give Your Job Announcements Legs” →

Thoughts on Public Access to CRS Reports and the Next Librarian of Congress: Watching Hayden Testify

1_2YvSdHAfGBfWS7YcRiSypg — Second row view of Dr. Hayden testifying before Sens. Blunt and Schumer, taken by the author.

Yesterday I sat behind Dr. Carla Hayden as she testified on her pending nomination as Librarian of Congress before the Senate Rules committee. It was a surprisingly emotional moment, as I waited among her friends and family who were so very excited to see an amazing woman nominated for this high honor. Her mother was there, who was impressively poised and elegant among the crowd of well wishers. Many had traveled a long distance to be there today. Continue reading “Thoughts on Public Access to CRS Reports and the Next Librarian of Congress: Watching Hayden Testify” →