It may feel like an ordinary Wednesday, but today is a milestone for legislative transparency. The House's leadership has issued a statement adopting the goal of "provid[ing] bulk access to legislative information to the American people without further delay." They have stated that bulk access "ranks among our top priorities in the 112th Congress" and directed a task force "to begin its important work immediately."

The statement was made by many of the key players on this issue in the House: Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Crenshaw, and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Issa. It was prompted in part by a measure in the legislative branch appropriations report that, as initially formulated, may have frozen efforts to move in this direction, followed by a partial fix to the report and ultimately a proposed amendment to the bill. (The amendment was apparently rejected by the House Rules Committee.) Of course, all of the letters to Congress and news coverage helped reinforce this as a higher priority.

The debate over whether there should be bulk access to legislative data is over. Because bulk access is a top priority of the 112th Congress, we expect to see tangible progress in the upcoming months. The remaining questions largely concern how bulk access should be implemented to meet the needs of the public while respecting the legitimate concerns of Congress and its support agencies.

While we are disappointed that the task force will not include members of the public, we hope that the public will be consulted. After all, the American people are the intended end-users. Sunlight and our friends in the transparency community stand ready to be of assistance as the technical, policy, and scope issues are addressed.

We have reached this turning point for a number of reasons. Rep. Honda has pushed to make bulk access happen over the last half-decade. Rep. Boehner made legislative transparency a priority when he was elected speaker. Reps. Cantor and Hoyer co-hosted the Congressional Facebook Hackathon, which declared bulk access to be an important goal. Rep. Lungren and the Committee on House Administration held hearings and issued directives establishing the important transparency portal docs.house.gov as well as hosted the Legislative Data and Transparency Conference. And there's many staff and members of Congress who have labored for years to bring this to fruition.

While this is clearly progress, there's still much more to do. We will be monitoring this issue closely.

by Daniel Schuman and Cassandra LaRussa

Despite significant strides towards improving public access to legislative proceedings, nearly a quarter of House hearings cannot be watched online despite recently instituted House rules – with the Appropriations Committee as the biggest offender, with 70 percent of its hearings unavailable on the Internet.

The Sunlight Foundation tracked 200 House hearings over 20 days to determine whether they were webcast live, plus 407 hearings from January 17 to April 2 to determine whether video from the proceedings were archived online. Twenty-five percent (489 of 200) of the hearings were not live-streamed, and 22 percent (91 of 407) were not archived on committee websites.

While these numbers, at first glance, indicate broad non-compliance with House rules, in reality, nearly all committees did a good or excellent job of live-streaming and archiving their videos online. The major offender was the House Appropriations Committee, which is at the heart of today's debate about the budget and is responsible for writing the chamber's spending bills.

Of the 489 hearings that were not live-streamed, 47 were Appropriations Committee hearings (Armed Services was the other one*and Foreign Affairs were the other two). Similarly, of the 91 hearings that did not have video archived on the committee website, 74 were Appropriations Committee hearings.

In short, the House Appropriations Committee is keeping the public in the dark.

The House's Online Video Rule

In January 2011, the House of Representatives adopted new rules requiring that video coverage of hearings be available online. "To the maximum extent practicable, each committee shall --- (a) provide audio and video coverage of each hearing ... in a manner that allows the public to easily listen to and view the proceedings; and (b) maintain the recordings of such coverage in a manner that is easily accessible to the public."

This was part of Speaker Boehner's commitment to open up the legislative process to the public. He explained that "the internet offers new opportunities to open the halls of Congress to Americans in every corner of our nation."

Live webstreams and video archives are a way to bring Congress closer to the people. The privately-run cable network C-SPAN cannot cover every hearing, and it's unreasonable to expect people to travel to DC to be in attendance. Combined with cutbacks in newsroom staffs around the country, less prominent issues are unlikely to be covered by local media.

Appropriations in the Dark

Unfortunately, the Appropriations Committee has often declined to video-record its proceedings. Last year, I described a hearing on the House's budget that was not televised and was held in a room so small few people could attend. This February, I took photos at another hearing to show the public what they were missing (and that making a recording would be relatively painless).

When we spoke with the Appropriations Committee's press office last year about recording its proceedings, we received the following response:

Whenever logistically possible, the main committee room - which is equipped with webcast and video capabilities - is used for hearings and mark-ups.

The Committee schedules rooms for hearings and mark ups based upon many factors, including but not limited to: space availability, accessibility for members and the public, physical proximity to the house floor to accommodate voting schedules, and room size. Committee hearing rooms are also used for a variety of other purposes such as meetings and briefings. In addition, we allow any credentialed media organization to tape and/or record our open hearings and mark-ups, no matter which room is being used.

With 70 percent of its hearings offline, the Committee's practice appears to diverge from the House's requirement of publishing video online to "the maximum extent practicable." Nearly all other committees manage to put their proceedings online. Appropriators have a large hearing room that has cameras pre-installed. Were the committee to choose to meet in the Capitol building, it could request coverage from the House Recording Studio or meet in one of the new hearing rooms in the Capitol Visitor's Center.

Survey of House Video Sources

We looked at both individual committee websites and the Library of Congress THOMAS website to determine video availability.

We found that committee websites were generally easy to navigate. Specific pages devoted to hearings included a chronological list with links to the archived webcasts, as well as testimony from witnesses and a live-streaming function. This demonstrates a significant improvement based on our past evaluation of committee websites and a serious attempt to address Sunlight’s past suggestions.

The Library of Congress recently began publishing hearing videos on THOMAS at the urging of the House. Unfortunately, the website is very difficult to use and navigate. While recordings are sensibly organized by committee, they are given impenetrable names like "USHR07 Armed Services Committee." Is that a full committee or subcommittee hearing? What is the name of the hearing? Occasionally recordings are titled by the date and time of the hearing, but this is not done consistently. Generally, they are only labeled by "date created," which may or may not be the date the hearing took place. And if multiple hearings took place on the same day, it's difficult to tell them apart.

In reviewing the committee websites against what's available on THOMAS, we found 9 of the 91 videos that were missing from the committees’ websites. The Ways and Means Committee has failed to post 5 videos on its website that are available on THOMAS; the Small Business Committee has missed 2; and the Appropriations Committee and the Budget Committee have each missed one. That still leaves 83 hearing that are not archived online from the time we monitored.

There have been important efforts to fill in the gaps. Carl Malamud and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have together published online over 1,100 committee hearing videos from 1993 to the present.

The American people have a right to see what their government is doing. In the upcoming months, appropriators in particular will make important decisions about how trillions of dollars are spent. It's time to allow everyone to watch this online in real-time, as promised in the House rules.

Methodology: We undertook a best effort to monitor live webcasts of committee hearings between February 27 and March 9 and March 26 to April 2, but we couldn't catch them all. For any webcast that we did not watch as it took place, we called the committee to determine whether one took place.

Because there is no official and complete source for all committee hearings, it's likely that we missed some of the archival hearings. In addition, we only monitored hearings during the first quarter of 2012. Some committees may not have met during that time period. Others may have been particularly active. This research was intended as a snapshot of committee compliance with House rules on making livestreams and video archives available.

Finally, our list of archival video on committee websites is accurate as of the date of review. It’s possible additional video was posted after we completed our survey.

Update: We have been assured by Foreign Affairs Committee that the hearing we identified as not having been webcast was in fact streamed live. The hearing was delayed by a half an hour, so it was not webstreamed at the announced start time, but apparently was available at the delayed start time.

Photo Credit: the test pattern is from Gak on Flickr.

Sunlight has long called for all bills to be posted online for 3 days before they're considered on the floor. So our disappointment with recent failures to post bills online for 3 days should be no surprise.

Today Sunlight and a number of other groups are sending a letter (below) to Speaker Boehner, calling on him to renew his commitment to posting all bills online for 3 days before their consideration.

The groups signing the letter are:

• Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest
• Demand Progress
• Government Accountability Project
• iSolon.org
• National Taxpayers Union
• Participatory Politics Foundation
• The Sunlight Foundation
• United Republic

Orgs Call on Speaker Boehner to Uphold "Read the Bill" 3 Day Pledge

Throughout the last year, we've repeatedly pointed out that Speaker Boehner repeatedly pledged to put all bills online for 72 hours before they're voted on, reflecting Sunlight's call and the ReadtheBill.org campaign.

Boehner's pledge was unambiguous and repeated often -- all non emergency bills for 72 hours.  Unfortuantely, this has become a pledge that has been broken often, most recently last week with the bills rushed through the House.

For easier reference, here are the commitments on video, edited into one shorter clip.

These commitments matter. Remember when Republicans derided Pelosi for the healthcare bill, and claimed that bills were being "rammed down" their throats? Similarly, remember when (mostly) Democrats were outraged that the PATRIOT Act wasn't read before it was passed?

When we're pushing for important transparency reforms, like having all bills online for 72 hours before floor consideration, the minority party is often a natural ally. Each time the majority changes hands, there's usually a rush to reform processes, and promises to run a more accountable ship. Of course, many of these promises are kept, and we make progress.

But the toughest promises to keep are often the most important, and this Congress has a very poor track record on legislative secrecy. When the most important bills are written by a tiny number of negotiators, and then foisted on the rest of Congress at the eleventh hour, we can expect dismal approval ratings and mistrust to rule the day.

While such discord in Congress is more likely under divided government like we've got now, perhaps Boehner (and Obama) should revisit the visions they set for their current roles before they began -- Obama on Change.gov, and Boehner in the Pledge to America.

They should remember that when they run up to the last possible second to negotiate deals between party leaders, it's not a zero sum competition. It's not whether Republicans or Democrats gain ground, or are seen as taking the more reasonable position. When the 72 hour expectation is flaunted, our trust in government suffers, as does our sense of merit in policymaking, and our sense of self governance.

Leaders from both parties have largely turned their backs on transparency in policymaking. Whether it's the perceived necessity of SuperPACS, or the acceptance of the ridiculous secrecy of the SuperCommittee, neither party has found solid ground to discuss transparent process.

Let's hope they revisit their past rhetoric, because without solid footing, we'll just keep sliding downhill.

Having legislation that is meaningfully public isn't a luxury, it's a requirement. A closed Congress is an abused process. Our leaders should remind themselves of the times they've agreed with that sentiment.

A bipartisan group of Members of Congress sent a letter to House and Senate leadership outlining specific transparency recommendations for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, aka the Super Committee.  The letter echoes Sunlight’s proposals for Super Committee transparency, calling for live broadcast of committee meetings; posting of the Super Committee’s final recommendations for 72 hours prior to a final committee vote; weekly posting of campaign contributions received by committee members; and weekly posting of meetings between committee members and special interests.

If these common sense proposals are enacted, they will help to begin to rebuild the public’s trust in the budget process. On the other hand, shrouding the work of the Super Committee behind a veil of secrecy will delegitimize its work, harkening back to the days when decisions were made in smoke filled rooms where money and power changed hands without pubic scrutiny.

None of the four proposals is controversial.  Ensuring the meetings and hearings of the Super Committee are public and online should be so obvious as to be a given. Given the importance of the Super Committee’s work, its hearings should not be held to a lesser standard than any other congressional committee—all of which assume hearings will be public unless national security would be at risk. Arguments that committee members won’t be able to deliberate if the meetings are public are, in a word, silly.  Public hearings will in no way thwart members from speaking and negotiating privately with one another. Making hearings public will provide an important window into the committee’s goals, its process and its progress.

The remainder of the recommendations similarly fall into a “been there, done that” category so should not be objectionable. Speaker Boehner has already endorsed a 72-hour rule for legislation. Seventy-two hours of public scrutiny and debate should likewise be required before a vote on the Super Committee’s recommendations.  Under current law, campaign contributions are public, and if they are given within 20 days of an election, they must be reported within 48 hours. Given the short life of the Super Committee, anything less frequent than the weekly reporting called for here risks nondisclosure of contributions until after the committee’s work is complete. Finally, as the letter points out, disclosure of meetings by lobbyists and other special interests has been required under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  Given that the Super Committee lobbying frenzy has already begun, the public should be made aware of who is asking for what.

When they return from recess, House and Senate leaders should announce that these common sense transparency measures will be adopted to ensure accountability and integrity in the Super Committee process.

Over the last week, the push for an open "supercommittee" has grown into a national issue. The issue has become the subject of pronouncements from congressional leaders, numerous bills, analysis and advocacy from non-profits, and intense public debate. The issue has now crossed over from a sidebar issue, to being a central part of the "supercommittee" story.

We're now getting a sense of where opposition to an open "supercommittee" might come from.  While Sunlight is calling for 5 core transparency recommendations, among others, we've occasionally seen resistance to the idea of open meetings for the joint committee. We're calling for "live webcasts of all official meetings and hearings," and we still don't know whether the supercommittee will hold public meetings or not.

The concern is that public meetings will make it harder to make tough decisions, causing further political paralysis.  This criticism, however, fails to distinguish between two things: making official meetings of the committee public, and making all deliberations among members of the committee public.  The first should be a no-brainer.

Official meetings of important government committees are held in public in the US. That's been reliably true for decades, and it's how we expect our government to work.  For good reason, too -- representation can only work if voters have some sense of what their representatives are doing, so that their vote bears some relation to their representative's record.  There are some exceptions to this general rule; congressional committees meet in out of public view for well-defined, largely noncontroversial reasons that are spelled out in the rules of the House and Senate.  Conference committees are the biggest exception to this rule, often evading requirements to meet publicly, but their work is in reconciling already passed legislation that has passed both the House and Senate.

And this joint committee is doing far more than just reconciling already-passed legislation.  It's a replacement for Congress altogether, save final approval. The House and Senate may have bound themselves to this requirement, but that doesn't make it any less remarkable.  The prerogatives of the minority have been completely waived in both chambers.  For this bill, there is no motion to recommit in the House, and no filibuster in the Senate.  Perhaps most unusually, inaction has been made nearly impossible, as failing to act means incurring deep budget cuts that were designed to be politically unpalatable.  This committee was designed to have to work, and Congress has been shunted out of the way.  These procedural requirements add up to mean that the joint committee is functioning as a replacement for Congress, and needs to be more open than Congress in order to be considered legitimate.  Holding official meetings in public is only the most basic first step toward that accountability.

We've seen the misguided objection that open meetings would squelch deliberations, and make it impossible to work through politically difficult ideas.  This is wrong.  Nothing about holding public meetings would keep Senator Murray from talking with Senator Toomey in private about any topic they please.  Having official meetings be public just guarantees the limited window into official business that everyone has come to rightfully expect in a democracy.  While these meetings may be full of pre-prepared speeches and posturing, they're still a public exercise that is fully worth having.

To go beyond public meetings and affect deliberations and negotiations, as some commenters fear, would take far more than what Sunlight is proposing.  Ex parte rules do exist in other contexts (like the FCC), and in some legislatures.  But let's be clear: in order to force all negotiations among some Members of Congress to be public, we'd be imposing a speech restriction.  And restricting the speech of our representatives is an unwise idea, to say the least.

In place of trying to restrict the speech of Members of Congress, you can carve out certain kinds of interactions which need to be reported publicly.  And that's exactly what exists already through our Lobbyist Disclosure Act, that Sunlight (and Reps. Quigley and Renacci) are calling to have expanded for the supercommittee.  If only 12 Members are going to be given the power to decide our alternative to the unpopular trigger, we should know when they're meeting with registered lobbyists or other powerful interests, and who is donating to their campaigns.

But even more basic than lobbying disclosure is the idea that the official work of our government should be done in full public view.  The perceived legitimacy of the "super committee" depends on it.  American dialog and deliberation are not so weak that they can't survive alongside public meetings.

Sunlight is ramping up our effort to get the new "Super Congress" committee to be as transparent as they are powerful.

We have honed yesterday's blog post into five requirements, and today we're sending a letter (see below) to congressional leaders demanding a transparent process.  We're inviting other organizations and individuals to support the effort, and so far CREW and Openthegovernment.org have signed on.  Please visit our campaign page, and sign up to show your support.

Open government doesn't happen automatically.  If the debt ceiling negotiations thus far haven't lived up to your expectations, then it's time to demand a better process.  And if you've got other ideas for how the process should be more open, we'd love to hear, and link to them.  POGO has a great post with more ideas for the "Super Congress" here.

Congress is clearly listening, as we've already seen one bill introduced with similar requirements -- Senator Vitter introduced a real-time campaign finance transparency bill yesterday.  Please add your support and demand a transparent "Super Congress".

Our five asks follow, and then the letter we're sending congressional leaders today:

Five things that the Super Congress should post on its website:

• Live webcasts of all official meetings and hearings
• The Committee's report should be posted for 72 hours before a final committee vote
• Disclosure of every meeting held with lobbyists and other powerful interests
• Disclosure of campaign contributions as they are received (on campaign sites, not the committee site)
• Financial disclosures of Committee members and staffers

Sunlight Letter to Leadership on Super Committee 2011-08-03

As Byron York just pointed out, the debt limit bill is being urgently rushed through Congress, and Members of Congress only have a few hours to read the bill.  (It was apparently posted online at about 1:45 AM.)

It didn't have to be this way.  As leaders worked against a looming deadline, they should have protected Members' and the public's ability to analyze legislation before floor consideration.  President Obama and Speaker Boehner both clearly agree with this sentiment; Boehner repeatedly promised 72 hours for all legislation, and Obama promised 5 days online before signing all legislation.  Clearly neither one is going to happen.

Certainly, nobody would suggest that the country default on its debt in order to post a bill online for 3 days.  But the exceptions to the 72 hour rule are reserved for emergency situations only.  We're in an emergency now, but it's one of our leaders' own making.  Rank and file Members of Congress are, along with their constituents, left with only a few hours to examine legislation of vital public import, even as party leaders have specifically promised to keep this from happening.  If, in the end, closed negotiations won out over public scrutiny, perhaps it's time to take a closer look at party leaders' rhetoric about openness.