Where Congress Learns About Congress
Unnoticed elsewhere but celebrated here, the Library of Congress must update its website to include a unified calendar for Senate and House of Representatives committee hearings and markups. The deadline is 90 days after enactment of the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, which was on September 21, which means it must be up by Friday, December 21st.
Continue reading “Coming Soon: A Unified Congressional Meetings Calendar”
On the 231st anniversary of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signing the U.S. Constitution, we’re pleased to share the good news that Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII) will today publish Congress’s legal treatise that explains how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution.
The treatise, known as the Constitution Annotated, is prepared by the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service and is published by the Government Publishing Office. Unfortunately, they do this poorly, as we describe below. For nine years we’ve asked the Library of Congress to do better, and since they have not answered those calls, Cornell’s LII has stepped up to the plate. Continue reading “Finally, The Constitution (Annotated) In Your Virtual Pocket”
The rules for the people writing the rules can seem like a black box, and that’s because to an extent they are. Demand Progress has voiced concerns for years that House Republicans are the only conference publishing their rules online (they also post their proposed changes to rules so extra credit for them).
Historically Senate Republicans and Democrats in both chambers haven’t published their conference rules, leaving the public in the dark, until now. House Democratic Caucus rules were recently published, along with the House Republican Conference rules. Now the Senate needs to step their game up and put their rules online as well.
In March, new legislation from Congress required the Library of Congress publish all non-confidential Congressional Research Service reports online by September 19th of this year. That deadline is rapidly approaching and while congressional and civil society concerns about the library’s implementation plan remain unaddressed, the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Hayden, declined a direct request from Rep. Lofgren for the Librarian to meet with civil society about improving the website. Continue reading “Plan for Publishing CRS Reports Falls Short”
Civil society, students, librarians, and the general public were elated when Congress decided to make the non-confidential non-partisan reports issued by the Congressional Research Service publicly available. These reports are often referred to as the gold standard for information concerning the issues before Congress.
We have obtained the Library of Congress’s implementation plan to make CRS reports available to the public, as required by 2018 Omnibus Appropriations Law. Unfortunately, it does not comport with the law or best practices for creating websites and is unusually expensive.
Today we release the Library’s May 22, 2018, CRS website implementation plan and civil society’s June 6, 2018 memo that responds to that plan. We hope that in doing so we will bring to the surface some of the problems with the CRS reports website’s proposed implementation so they can be fixed in time for the statutory deadline. (The Federation of American Scientists published on Friday a memo to congressional staff about the Library’s plans, but this is different from the implementation plan.) Continue reading “Library Plan to Publish CRS Reports Falls Short of the Law, Is Unduly Expensive”
The Congressional Transparency Caucus will host a briefing on foreign lobbying on July 25th at 2pm in Rayburn 2456. RSVP here.
Rep. Mike Quigley will be giving opening remarks. Panelists will include:
Here is the announcement from Rep. Mike Quigley, caucus co-chair, in his “Dear Colleague” letter.
Continue reading “Congressional Transparency Caucus Briefing: Shining a Light on Foreign Lobbying”
The Senate Appropriations committee provided $2 million to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) to enhance the website Oversight.gov, which provides a central repository for Inspector General reports from dozens of federal Inspectors General.
The website currently is funded through a pass-the-hat mechanism, where each Inspector General kicks in some money to help pay for CIGIE. This appropriation, which is made to the GSA Inspector General but is directed towards CIGIE, is the first time there is a direct appropriation for CIGIE’s work. (Disclosure: we submitted testimony in support of a direct appropriation for Oversight.gov, as did a coalition of organizations coordinated by the Project on Government Oversight.)
While an impressive first step, the Oversight.gov website can be significantly improved, and this will provide the funds to do that. Continue reading “Appropriators to Strengthen Access to Inspectors General Reports”
We are pleased to announce that we have published a list of organizations and individuals that provided $50,000 or more in funding to Demand Progress/ Demand Progress Action in 2017. In prior years we published our IRS tax forms (2014, 2015), but we wanted to add an additional measure of transparency.
We believe that an important aspect of evaluating a political message is knowing who is paying for it. Money can have both direct and indirect effects on the positions organizations take — or do not take — and knowing where the money comes from can help make it possible to evaluate the message. We believe that all non-profits should have to disclose their donors above a certain threshold. Continue reading “Demand Progress 2017 Donor Disclosures”
The recently-signed omnibus spending law contains transparency provisions intended to make our federal government just a little more open and accountable. They include: creating a hub for the reports that explain each agency’s federal spending request; a first step towards opening up federal court orders for everyone to read without charge; creating a central repository for reports by the federal Inspectors General; and making reports by the Congressional Research Service available to everyone.
While all these measures are important, the hardest fought is public access to CRS reports. CRS provides non-partisan unbiased explanations of policy matters before Congress, and they make it easier for all of us to have conversations based on the facts.
Continue reading “Transparency Provisions Inside the FY18 Appropriations Law”
The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act was introduced yesterday in the House and Senate, thanks to the tremendous leadership of Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Sens. Ron Portman (R-OH) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The bipartisan bill (read it here) requires: