The House Rules Committee is looking into how to provide better context for legislation, by showing the difference between different versions of bills.

The committee's oversight plan, posted on its website, (as all House committees are newly required to do), lays out the committee's priorities for the coming Congress. One of the major headings is "Impact of new Information Technology on the House," in which recent reforms are outlined, along with a discussion of "comparative prints":

Some of the issues raised during the transition from the 111th to 112th Congress were not yet mature enough to be addressed in this Congress’ rules package. One such issue is the availability of “comparative prints” showing both changes to bills at various stages of the legislative process as well as showing changes to current law proposed by legislation before the House. A number of current Members of the House were previously State legislators where the practice of showing proposed changes as part of the text of bills was commonplace. While clause 3(e) of rule XIII (commonly referred to as the “Ramsayer” rule) requires a comparative print in committee reports, there is wide acknowledgement that this is insufficient to meet the current needs of Members and the public. The Committee will examine the need for changes in rules and procedures to make comparative prints more widely available at various stages of the legislative process.

It's fantastic that the Rules Committee will be examining this issue further; Sunlight also gets this feature request rather often. It's to this end that both OpenCongress.org and GovTrack.us both feature versioning tools, to let users see how bills have changed over time.

Here's a good example of this feature in action. You can easily compare the version of last Congress's DISCLOSE Act as it was introduced in the House, to how it looked when it got to the Senate, using the boxes along the left-hand side.

This isn't a trivial capability; we have often tried to do this for bills as they move through the process. Daniel used Microsoft Word as a workaround to compare versions of the DISCLOSE Act last year, since the bills had a long lag time before they appeared on THOMAS. We even once made a video about how difficult this sort of process would be if it were entirely paper-based.

If the Rules Committee makes any headway on attacking this problem, we'll be glad for it; tracking legislation is empowering, and understanding changes as they are made makes the process much easier. They've already helped, in fact, by starting to publish bills in XML on the Rules Committee site, which they deserve enormous credit for doing.

In a public relations move, Sleepy’s -- a mattress company -- announced it will give pillows to freshmen Members of Congress who sleep in their offices. The gifts, however, could run afoul of House gift rules.

A Member of Congress “may accept a gift … that [he or she] believes to have a value of less than $50,” according to House Rule XXV. So, what is a good night’s sleep worth?

Sleepy's press release isn’t clear, but it links to a two-pack of "Harmony Jumbo Pillows," which retail for $39.99, but are available for the low low price of $31.99, plus tax. If these are indeed the pillows that will be delivered to our nation’s capitol, Members of Congress can rest easy so long a the pillows don’t come from a registered lobbyist or a private entity that retains or employs registered lobbyists. If Sleepy’s has a lobbyist -- and it appears they do not -- the pillows need to be returned or paid for. Otherwise, the gift appears fine.

However, were Sleepy’s to provide a more expensive pillow set, say the “Rapture Perfect Posture Memory Foam Pillow” (set of two) for $55.99 plus tax, or the “Tempur-Pedic Rhapsody Pillow,” a steal at $199.99 plus tax, the gifts would cause a political nightmare.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune points out another possible ethics violation made during the opening day of the 112th Congress. Lobbyist Bob Livingston, a former member of Congress, was on the floor of the House for the swearing-in ceremony despite ethics rules forbidding former lawmakers who lobby from exercising their privilege of setting foot in the House chamber. Livingston apparently left the floor after being informed that he could be in violation of the rule.

[I]t turns out, Livingston, who now runs the Livingston Group lobbying firm, was on the floor in violation of an ethics rule, passed by the Republican House in 2006 in the wake of the scandal over lobbyist Jack Abramoff, that denies lawmakers-turned-lobbyists their lifetime floor (and gym) privileges, except on select ceremonial occasions.

"I was under the impression that opening day and the State of the Union were days when I, as a lobbyist, could indeed go on the floor," Livingston said. "When I was informed that I was mistaken, I left."

Rules that restrict lobbyists from setting foot into the House chamber are important, but may be difficult to enforce as there is no one in direct violation aside from the lobbyist and the officers who gave the lobbyist floor access.

Also, there is a provision to the rule that allows the Speaker to create rules that would provide for floor access during ceremonial or educational functions.

Before the holiday break, I compared the draft House Rules for the 112th Congress against the House Rules for the 111th Congress. Yesterday, House Republicans released an updated Rules proposal, so I've taken a second look.

Here's a redline of the House Rules as a Word file. A PDF is available below. Please note that the rules changes are only part of the rules package up for a vote today -- there are also orders (resolutions) that will apply during the 112th Congress only, including a reauthorization of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

111th House Rules as Amended by 112th Rules Changes

Earlier today I wished for a redlined version of the House Rules so we could see how the proposed 112th Congress rules stack up against the 111th Congress' rules. In what was a fairly unpleasant process, I've scraped the PDF for the 111th Congress, reformatted it, and entered by hand all of the proposed revisions. (No guarantees of perfection here; but it should be pretty accurate.)

For all those who've been pining away for the 111th rules in Word format, here you go. And here's the redline. And the PDF is below. Enjoy!

Redline of How the House Rules May Change in the 112th Congress

House Republicans have published their proposed rules package for the 112th Congress here. It includes the bill that would instantiate the new rules [PDF] and a section-by-section analysis. It's worth noting that the rules package largely adopts the 111th House's rules, but with a 33-page list of alterations that make some important changes.  It would be helpful to have a redline version of the 111th House Rules to show how they would be changed.

House Republicans are expected to consider the proposed rules at a meeting on January 4th, where the proposal could change further if the conference adopts amendments. On January 5th, the whole House will vote on whether to adopt these rules or an alternative.

The House Rules for the 111th Congress are available here, but in an unwieldy PDF format. Sunlight's recommendations for updating the House rules are here.

This morning The Hill newspaper reports that K street is “scouring the ranks of lawmakers facing tough reelection races or retirement” in an effort to “snag top-tier lobbyists.” That effort raises questions about possible conflicts of interest between Representatives who are negotiating for their next job while working at their current one. I’ve examined this issue before.

Representatives are required to file a form with the House Ethics Committee within 3 business days of the "commencement of direct negotiations or any agreement of future employment or compensation." That form isn’t made publicly available unless a Representative takes the additional step of recusing himself or herself from a matter where a conflict of interest arises. That recusal -- and the filing of additional paperwork with the Ethics committee -- causes the statement of negotiations to be made available to the public.

Of course, the public availability of that record is in name only. You have to go to the Clerk’s office to get the records as they’re not available online. So my recommendations?

The statement of negotiations form should be made publicly available at the time they’re filed, without waiting for the official recusal form to be filed. Members should be reminded of their obligation to file these reports. The forms should be available online for inspection. And Representatives should have to declare that they've started negotiating for a job regardless of whether the talks are "direct."

This is such a good idea, we included it in our suggestions for reforming the House Rules. Until those rules are changed, Representatives should go the extra mile and publicly declare that they are negotiating for their next job.

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.

Today, Sunlight is announcing a package of House Rules reforms for the upcoming 112th Congress that can help create the most open and accountable Congress in history. In addition to calling for leadership in Congress to pursue these reforms, we would like to hear your feedback on our recommendations.

This is big news for a number of reasons. The House Rules have enormous power in determining how all aspects of the U.S. House of Representatives functions as a legislative body. Examining the rules also gives us a chance to assert some of our signature reform efforts: from the 2007 Open House Project recommendations to the ReadtheBill.org and Transparency in Government Act reforms—as well as a lot of new ground.

Sunlight is calling for doubling the Office of Congressional Ethics budget; for all public ethics filings to be posted affirmatively online; for all non-emergency legislation to be posted online for 72 hours; and for a single database of all earmark information. We’re also calling for a public database of “Dear Colleague” letters; shoring up ethics rules; providing greater access to legislative data; and making all committee rooms wired for video, just to name just a few. To look at our recommendations in more detail, we've published a one page summary, in addition to an HTML and PDF version.

We’ve identified well over 60 reform opportunities and welcome your reactions and comments at the end of this post. We’ll be writing a great deal over the coming weeks about the individual reforms listed here, both the research it represents and the vision it presents for a transparent, accountable Congress.

Want to read more about how the next Congress can be better? You can read the full list of recommendations here or view our policy overview here.

In case you needed the short version of the full history of Congress and Read the Bill, please read below. Just to fit this into a blog post, I'm starting in 1965 and not 1789. I thought that after the rushed cap and trade vote and the upcoming health care reform vote it would be important to provide some background on Congress' habit of not reading bills:

In the mid-1960s, a movement was afoot among young, liberal members of Congress to reform the way the legislative branch operated. Opacity and centralized power were their enemies. Openness and diffusion of power were the solutions. In a 1965 report issued by the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, one such area where openness was ascribed as a means to diffuse power was the time allowed to study bills prior to consideration:

A bill that cannot survive a 3-day scrutiny of its provisions is a bill that should not be enacted. Proper consideration must be given to important legislation, even in the closing days of a session. The world's most powerful legislature cannot in good conscience deprive its membership of a brief study of a committee report prior to final action.

Prior to the issuance of this report, Congress had mandated a 1-day layover for bills in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Soon Congress would pass a new reogranization bill. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 contained a provision requiring a 3-day (calendar day, not legislative day) layover for all bills and committee reports prior to a bill being considered.

This change was made within the House and Senate rules, which are maleable, shifting guidelines, not strict laws of the land. The rule did not require any type of majority to waive the 3-day layover requirement and soon the rule would be waived repeatedly to pass large pieces of legislation that the majority wanted passed in a hurry. By the late-1980s, a new practice emerged in Congress: the combination appropriations bill, then derisively known as omnibus appropriations bills. These bills, which have become a more regular feature of Congress in recent years, could measure in length of thousands of pages, taking a staff days or weeks to read, parse and understand. Few of these bills were given adequate time for neither reading, parsing nor understanding. And if wisdom comes from understanding, then Congress was left none the wiser.

For most of the omnibus bills passed, the 3-day layover rule was waived. Back then, newspapers and trade magazines actually noted the waiving of this rule. Today, it goes without mention.

As the seasons turned from the decade of glitz and greed to grunge and gangsta rap, the political winds in Congress shifted in favor from the majority Democrats to the minority Republicans. Republicans, smelling blood, took up the ethics mantle as a cudgel against a Democratic House that had become stale, abusive of House rules and riddled with corruption scandals. One such abuse of House rules to be used against the majority was the consistent waiver of the 3-day layover rule. Bills were passed with no time to read them.

In 1992, Rep. Harris Falwell called for a 2/3rds majority vote to waive the 3-day layover rule. This would later become a central piece of the Read the Bill legislation currently offered by Rep. Brian Baird in the 110th Congress. The other central piece of Baird's Read the Bill legislation could not have been introduced in 1992 as the platform for distribution had yet to be created.

In 1993, the World Wide Web opened the Internet to the wider public and the Mosaic browser quickly followed to allow for much greater interface capabilities through the various nodes of the Net. Congressional lawmakers quickly began moving operations online. In 1995, the new Republican majority launched the legislative search web site, THOMAS.

Despite increasing the ability of the public to receive bills and bill information over the Internet, the Republican majority continued to waive the 3-day layover rule just as they had complained the Democrats did. During this period, many rushed pieces of legislation were the result of Speaker Gingrich's failed efforts to shut down the government. In the wake of the public rejection of his move to refuse funding for government operations, the House was forced to quickly rush large appropriations bills through the chamber to begin funding again.

But the 3-day layover waivers did not stop at crises akin to the government shutdown. Over the course of the 12 year Republican reign in the House, bills became bigger and were passed faster. By the last few years of House Republican rule, under Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the rushing of bills became a fiasco.

In 2006, Rep. Brian Baird introduced legislation that would require, like Rep. Falwell's 1992 proposal, a 2/3rds vote on waiving the 3-day layover rule and the public distribution of all legislation for 72 hours prior to consideration. These two ideas married both the diffusion of power within Congress presented by 1960s reformers with the diffusion of power to the people provided for by the connectivity of the populace through the Internet. The Democrats rallied to Baird's proposal, including it as part of an ethics platform, just as the Republicans had in 1994. But, history has a way of repeating itself.

After sweeping back into power after 12 years, House Democrats passed a massive ethics reform bill. They failed to include Baird's Read the Bill legislation in the reform package. To this day, the 3-day layover rule is waived with regularity and bills are rushed through Congress.

While it's easy to fault the current Congress for process abuses like the waiving of the 3-day layover rule, it should always be remembered that this is a process that has been born of institutional abuse over time. Like drug addicts, it's hard to stop abusing once you've started. (Or rather, like Pringles: once you pop, you just can't stop.) The efforts at diffusion of power through allowing lawmakers more time to study legislation had largely fallen by the wayside as Speakers, starting in the 1980s, sought to reconsolidate power that reformers in the 1960s and 1970s had spread around Congress.

While the reformers of that era sought to create more independence and spread more power among individual members of Congress, the Read the Bill legislation -- along with the many other transparency provisions supported here -- are aimed at diffusing power to the people writ large (that's you I'm talking about). Thanks to the Internet we can distribute that power back to us by getting the information we need to hold elected officials, and sometimes ourselves, to account. Transparency provides knowledge and knowledge is power.