Yesterday, Representative Bono Mack introduced a resolution amending House rules to require live internet streaming of all committee and subcommittee markups of legislation. According to Bono Mack's official announcement of House Resolution 1675, this would "grant citizens the opportunity to witness and participate in the legislative process -- start to finish."

Bono Mack's resolution is a rather simple but meaningful step that Congress can take in the direction of transparency. Sunlight has long advocated for streaming video of all committee proceedings and pertinent events such as the White House health care summit and the recent Republican open meeting with lobbyists.  We've also recommended wiring all hearing rooms for live streaming and automatically broadcasting all open committee proceedings as a part of our package of proposed changes to the House Rules for the 112th Congress.

We commend the Congresswoman on her resolution, and hope that it may be considered during a lame-duck session after November's elections or, at the very least, serve as a framework for broadcasting rules for the next Congress.

One week into the 111th Congress and lawmakers have already introduced hundreds of bills. Of those few hundred bills some are bound to be concerned with what we're concerned with: transparency and government ethics. Using Open Congress' awesome bill tracking powers, I've compiled a list of the bills that relate to Sunlight's work. You can find them by joining the Open Congress community and becoming my friend, or just keep reading below the jump.

H.R.36 Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009

H.R.35 Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009

H.R.311 To cap discretionary spending, eliminate wasteful and duplicative agencies, reform entitlement programs, and reform the congressional earmark process.

H.R.420 To prohibit the use of Federal funds for a project or program named for an individual then serving as a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator of the United States Congress.

H.Res.40 Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require each standing committee to hold periodic hearings on the topic of waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement in Government programs which that committee may authorize, and for other purposes.

S.49 A bill to help Federal prosecutors and investigators combat public corruption by strengthening and clarifying the law.

S.103 A bill to require disclosure and payment of noncommercial air travel in the Senate.

S.104 A bill to prohibit authorized committees and leadership PACs from employing the spouse or immediate family members of any candidate or Federal office holder connected to the committee.

S.105 A bill to amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to establish criminal penalties for knowingly and willfully falsifying or failing to file or report certain information required to be reported under that Act.

S.133 A bill to prohibit any recipient of emergency Federal economic assistance from using such funds for lobbying expenditures or political contributions, to improve transparency, enhance accountability, encourage responsible corporate governance, and for other purposes.

S.162 Fiscal Discipline, Earmark Reform and Accountability Act

These last two bills are of particular interest. The latter bill, S. 162, is the previously blogged Feingold-McCain earmark reform legislation. I've attached the actual language below (unfortunately it takes the Government Printing Office a while to get legislative language online) for you to peruse.

Conservative bloggers Soren Dayton and Mark Tapscott have been discussing possible ethics and transparency reforms that minority Republicans could push in Congress next year. The issues that they propose are as follows. From Dayton:

First, in both bodies, allow individuals to submit ethics complaints and require the various ethics committees to officially reject complaints.

Second, faster and more complete campaign finance proposals. All contributions down to $5, or even just all contributions, should be disclosed. Electronic contributions should be disclosed within 72 hours, and checks should be disclosed within 72 hours of deposit. These would be real-time disclosed on the FEC website. This would solve the problem that the Sunlight Foundation and others have tried to address with S. 223.

Third, put video of all publicly accessible business meetings online. I am sure that C-SPAN and Google would be happy to help. I know that many committees keep video of markups, but release neither the video nor transcripts.

Fourth, I am sure that there are things that are specific to disclosure of financial interests that we have learned out of the Rangel affair. Throw that in.

And from Tapscott:

First, apply the Freedom of Information Act to Congress. Most Americans resent that Congress passes laws it expects the rest of us to abide by but exempts itself. Ending the 42-year-old congressional FOIA exemption would be a major step in the right direction and one that would call the Democrats bluff on the transparency issue.

Second, require Members and their key personal and committee staff members (chiefs of staff, legislative directors, committee staff directors, legal counsels, possibly others) to maintain online daily calendars recording names and titles of all participants in meetings concerning any proposed legislation or expenditure of federal funds.

Third, abolish the absurd categorical values in the annual financial disclosures required of Members. Show us the money, the shares, the property, the consideration, Congressman. Require the same level of disclosure for key staff members included in the second suggestion.

I'm not going to get into the weeds of Dayton's campaign finance proposal (there are equally persuasive arguments to be made about whether or not the extent of disclosure proposed by Dayton would fit into the reasoning behind Buckley v. Valeo's upholding of campaign finance disclosure), but I will make a quick point about S. 223:

The whole crux behind S. 223 and the filing of Senate campaign finance reports is that Senators do not file with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Instead, senators file with the Senate Office of Public Records, which then sends the reports to the FEC. The law requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports mandates e-filing only for those filing directly with the FEC. S. 223 does one thing: requires senators to file directly with the FEC, thus putting them under the same e-filing mandate as the House. Because of this issue, Dayton's proposal, if it intends to fix the e-filing problem, would have to include the S. 223 language.

As regards the other proposals, these are my general thoughts:

1. Ethics committee: The whole process is a total mess, completely devasted by partisan tit-for-tat ethics complaints of the past. The Senate committee works far better than the House committee (as in it actually works) and is even required to submit annual disclosures about their activity (see last year's here). The House committee should accept outside complaints and figure out a fair way to sort them. I don't know if they need to publicly reject complaints.

2. Video online: A simple yes will do here. See The Open House Project for more.

3. Disclosure of financial interests: Tapscott's proposal to eliminate the categorical values on personal financial disclosures is spot on. Sunlight has pushed for this and other changes to financial disclosure forms for a few years now. You see the legislative language of our proposal at PublicMarkup.org.

4. Schedules: Some lawmakers do post their daily schedule online. It's a great way to increase accountability. Also, lobbyists should be required to disclose their meetings with the offices of covered officials as well.

I'm going to leave the application of FOIA to Congress alone for right now.

A number of newly elected lawmakers have serious experience with Internet technology and used the Internet in the campaign more than any previous class of incoming congressmen. According to TechCentral,

Freshmen lawmakers are not only eager to use the latest technologies to communicate with constituents -- many of them come from tech and telecom backgrounds. Most used some type of new media tool on their campaign pages, and nearly half provided links to online blogs, according to a National Journal analysis. Almost half also linked to YouTube videos, followed by Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter and Blip.tv sites.

Thanks to the lifting of restrictive franking rules from online content, these new congressmen can start off their legislative career with a free hand to operate online.

It's great to see so many lawmakers coming into their new jobs familiar with the variety of online communications sources available to them. I'm also very interested in seeing how these freshmen used online communications, rather than what they used. Were they engaged in conversations online, through blogs or Twitter? Did they blog openly at other online venues? What is their history of engagement online?

I think that the answers to these questions will better help to gauge how they will use online technologies and communications - and how transparent they will be about it - than simply recognizing that, as a class, they used technology more than previous incoming groups of freshmen.