---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 20:59:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gary Ruskin <gary@essential.org>
Congressional Reform Briefings September 24, 1996
Sources indicate that the House Oversight Committee may soon
act on a measure to improve online access to Congressional
documents. Legislative details are currently murky -- and
apparently subject to behind-closed-door negotiations between
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and key members of the House
Oversight Committee. Citizen pressure on two key House Oversight
Committee members -- Reps. Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Vic Fazio (D-CA)
-- is badly needed at this time.
Currently, many important Congressional documents are not
available via the Internet, including committee prints of bills,
Congressional hearing records, texts of legislative amendments,
and Congressional Research Service reports. This information
lock-out places ordinary citizens at a great disadvantage in most
Washington legislative battles, because most citizens do not have
real-time access to the core documents of our democracy -- or the
same access enjoyed by Washington special interest lobbyists.
Congress is expected to declare final adjournment on
September 27th.
The next three days are very important. Please call or fax
the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas,
and the Ranking Minority Member, Rep. Vic Fazio, urging them to
provide online access to the following Congressional documents:
* Committee prints and discussion drafts of bills and
Chairman's Marks
* Verbatim transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected)
from House Hearings
* Prepared testimonies to House committees
* Voting records of Representatives
* Texts of legislative amendments
* Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue
Briefs
* Committee reports
* Transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected) of House
committee mark-ups
* Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports
* Lobbyist Disclosure reports
* House Financial Disclosure reports
* Statements of Disbursements of the House
Following is contact information for Reps. Thomas and Fazio:
Rep. Bill Thomas:
Phone: (202) 225-2915
Fax: (202) 225-2908
Rep. Vic Fazio:
Phone: (202) 225-5716
Fax: (202) 225-5141
For background on the issue of online access to
Congressional documents, following is a letter from more than 700
citizens to Reps. David Dreier and Newt Gingrich.
-------------------------------------------------------------
July 1, 1996
Honorable David Dreier
Chairman, Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
House Rules Committee
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Honorable Newt Gingrich
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
RE: Requiring the House of Representatives to
Provide Taxpayers with Access to House
Documents via the Internet
Dear Representatives Dreier and Gingrich:
We are writing to urge the Subcommittee on Rules and
Organization of the House to approve changes in House Rules
requiring the House to provide the public with online access to
House documents. As a part of The 21st Century Congress Project,
the Subcommittee is considering issuing recommendations for new
House Rules governing which House documents will be made
available to the public via the Internet.
We want to express the enormous gratitude of the American
people and the Internet community for establishing THOMAS, which
provides citizens with online access to some Congressional
documents. Similarly, there is gratitude for the Speaker's
repeated statements in support of providing access to
Congressional documents via the Internet. For example, in a
November 11, 1994 speech, Representative Gingrich said that "we
will change the rules of the House to require that all documents
and all conference reports and all committee reports be filed
electronically as well as in writing and that they cannot be
filed until they are available to any citizen who wants to pull
them up. Thus, information will be available to any citizen in
the country at the same moment it is available to the highest
paid Washington lobbyist."
And yet, as you know, many crucial House documents are still
not available online. In spite of the Speaker's commitment, the
Republican House and Senate leadership have followed in the same,
old, discredited tradition of limited access to key legislative
documents perfected under previous Democratic-controlled
Congresses -- the same tradition that provides enormous political
advantage to Washington lobbyists while leaving the American
people without real-time access to the core documents of our
democracy.
We are growing increasingly frustrated with the failure of
the 104th Congress to provide online access to these documents.
We have repeatedly pointed out the effects of these
anti-democratic policies during the 104th Congress.
* In September, 1995 we wrote to Speaker Gingrich to
protest the failure of the House Ways and Means
Committee to provide online access to chairman's marks
for a 700-page major tax bill involving billions of
dollars. When we called the Ways and Means Committee
to obtain a copy of those chairman's marks, we were
told by Committee staff that we would have to purchase
a printed copy from the Bureau of National Affairs
(BNA). BNA told us the price of those chairman's marks
was $27.
* In January, during the debates over the
telecommunications deregulation bill -- arguably the
most important legislation approved in the 104th
Congress -- the only source for the most up-to-date
drafts of the legislation was not THOMAS or GPO Access
but the Regional Bell Operating Companies Internet
site. Committee prints and discussion drafts of the
bill were not available through THOMAS or GPO Access.
It is outrageous that citizens should have had to rely
on telephone companies to obtain up-to-date drafts of
bills produced by the United States Congress.
* In May, we wrote to Senators Nancy Landon Kassebaum and
John Warner regarding the failure of the Senate Labor
Committee to provide online access to discussion drafts
of legislation governing the privacy safeguards for
medical records.
We also have written letters to Rep. Vern Ehlers in
December, 1994, to Speaker Gingrich in August, 1995, and to
Senator Warner in March, 1996 requesting that this Congress
provide online access to key Congressional documents. We have
yet to receive a written response to any of these letters.
Chairman Dreier has stated that the goal of The 21st Century
Congress Project "is to develop and recommend changes in
Congress' operations and legislative procedures that will allow
technology to make the institution [Congress] more open,
accountable and effective." That goal can only be met by
requiring the House to make the following documents available to
the public via the Internet:
1. Committee prints and discussion drafts of bills and
Chairman's Marks. While citizens are examining the copies of
bills which have been introduced and made available through
THOMAS and GPO Access, Washington lobbyists are studying the
paper copies of a committee print, discussion draft, or
"chairman's mark" of a bill, which are the relevant
documents for legislation. House policy currently prevents
the U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) from
disseminating committee prints without permission of the
chair of the Committee. We believe this policy is
indefensible and should be changed immediately. We urge you
to require that the GPO disseminate all versions of House
bills electronically, including all committee prints,
widely-disseminated discussion drafts, and chairmans marks.
2. Verbatim transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected) from
House Hearings. Lobbyists can buy transcripts of House
hearings from transcribers, but most taxpayers have to wait
months or more than a year for printed hearing records. We
urge you to support providing online access to verbatim
transcripts -- both corrected and uncorrected -- of House
hearings as soon as possible after the hearings have taken
place.
3. Prepared testimonies to House committees. We recommend that
it should be House policy to ask witnesses testifying before
House committees to provide an electronic copy of their
prepared testimony, and then require the testimony to be
immediately placed online on THOMAS and GPO Access. In
addition, all government officials should be required to
provide electronic copies of their prepared testimonies for
public dissemination.
4. Voting records of Representatives. While the votes on bills
reaching the floor of the House are recorded in the online
version of the Congressional Record, it is often
time-consuming and difficult for citizens to find these
votes without extensive browsing of the documents. Even
worse, the online version of the Congressional Record only
contains 1993-present. Previous votes are not available
online through THOMAS or GPO Access. We recommend that you
support providing online access to voting records of
Representatives with an easily searchable database, indexed
by member name, bill title, bill number, and bill subject.
5. Amendments. We urge you to support providing online access
to the texts of House amendments, and that until a bill or
amendment is online, it should not be considered
"introduced."
6. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue
Briefs. In September 1994, CRS announced a pilot project
for the electronic distribution of CRS Reports and Issue
Briefs to Congressional offices. However, the taxpayers are
still without online access to CRS Reports and Issue Briefs.
7. Committee reports. GPO Access distributes numbered
committee reports for the 104th Congress. But not all
committee reports are officially "reported," and therefore
not all committee reports are made available through GPO
Access. In addition, House committee reports before the
104th Congress are not available online through GPO Access
or any other government online service. We urge you to
support providing online access to all House committee
reports, including those not officially "reported."
8. Transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected) of House
committee mark-ups. We urge you to provide online access to
the corrected and uncorrected texts of committee mark-ups as
soon as possible after the mark-ups have taken place.
9. Conference reports. Conference reports for the second
session of the 103rd and the full 104th Congress are now
available online by searching the online versions of
Congressional Record. However, conference reports before
the 103rd Congress are not available online. We urge you to
support providing online access to conference reports before
the 103rd Congress.
10. Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports. The Federal
Elections Commission (FEC) reports on campaign contributions
are of great interest to millions of Americans. Online
access through THOMAS or GPO Access would greatly broaden
the dissemination of this important information. We urge
you to require the FEC to provide online access to the full
history of FEC campaign contribution data searchable by
candidate name, contributor, PAC, party, and campaign
committee.
11. Lobbyist Disclosure reports. The Lobbying Disclosure Act of
1995 requires collection of valuable information regarding
the activities of lobbyists. Unfortunately, this
information is only made available at the House Legislative
Resource Center and the Senate Office of Public Records. We
urge you to make lobbyist disclosure reports available
online.
12. House Financial Disclosure reports. GPO Access provides
online access to nearly all of the series of numbered "House
Documents" in the 104th Congress. One egregious exception
is House Financial Disclosure reports, which are not
available online through GPO Access or THOMAS.
13. Statement of Disbursements of the House. During the 104th
Congress, the House renamed, revised, and improved the old
Clerk of the House reports, which document how each House
member has spent their Member's Representational Allowance
funds. These statements are not available either through
GPO Access or THOMAS.
We hope that The 21st Century Congress Project will
recommend these documents be provided to the public via the
Internet. If you have any questions about this letter, please
contact Gary Ruskin at (202) 296-2787, or James Love at (202)
387-8030.
Sincerely,
Gary Ruskin, Director, Congressional Accountability Project
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
Jim Warren, Columnist, open-government advocate and GovAccess
Editor
Audrie Krause, Executive Director, Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility
Lori Fena, Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Scott Armstrong, Executive Director, Information Trust
Richard L. Ottinger, Dean, Pace University School of Law, former
member of Congress
James Neff, Chair, Access Committee, Investigative Reporters and
Editors
Marjorie Power, City Council Member, Montpelier, Vermont
Ellen Miller, Executive Director, Center for Responsive Politics
Peggy Cairns, Assistant Civil Librarian, U.S. Department of
Justice
Paula Collins, State Chair, United We Stand America,
Massachusetts
Shabbir Safdar, Co-Founder, Voters Telecommunications Watch
Harry Martin III, Librarian and Professor of Law, Harvard Law
School
Roger Possner, City Librarian, Covina Public Library, California
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For more information about online access to Congressional
documents send e-mail to the Congressional Accountability Project
at gary@essential.org or call (202) 296-2787.
The Congressional Accountability Project is a Ralph Nader
Congressional reform group.
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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
Gary Ruskin
Congressional Accountability Project | Internet: gary@essential.org
P.O. Box 19446
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: (202) 296-2787 Fax: (202) 833-2406
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