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.

When a Leadership PAC and a Super PAC join forces, the influx of cash can help swing an election, concentrating power and weakening our democratic principles. A high profile example of the impact of such a PACkage (sorry) came to light after Roll Call reported that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Leadership PAC, ERIC PAC, contributed $25,000 to the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Super PAC dedicated to defeating incumbents. The contribution was to be used, in the words of a Cantor political consultant, “only in the effort to support Congressman Kinzinger, in a primary race against Congressman Manzullo.” (The two Republican Members of Congress were pitted against one another as a result of redistricting in Illinois. Kinzinger, a freshman, is a favorite of Cantor’s “young guns.”) Kinzinger’s race benefitted from another $25,000 contribution from Rep. Aaron Schock’s Leadership PAC, the Generation Y fund. The Generation Y fund contribution was also funneled through the Campaign for Primary Accountability.

Although Leadership PACs have long been used to by Members of Congress to curry favor with their colleagues, prior to the invention of Super PACS, there were limits on the amounts Leadership PACs could contribute to candidates’ campaigns. Now, those limits can be easily ignored.

The press around Cantor’s contributions revolves around the damage control he is doing to convince old guard in the House that he is still in their corner. But the inside baseball is not what should concern the public. Instead, the spectacle of Eric Cantor using the confluence of Leadership PACs and Super PACs to become kingmaker should be what is making the papers. In the last weeks of the campaign—a campaign in which early polling had Manzullo in the lead—the Campaign for Primary Accountability spent at least $75,000 on television ads to defeat Manzullo. Two-thirds of that amount came from two people: Cantor and Schock. Assuming Kinzinger is elected in the fall, voters in his district would be right to wonder whether in a tough vote, he will represent their interests, or the interests of Eric Cantor.

Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor today sent a letter to the Clerk of the House calling for better access to the House's electronic data:

...At the start of the 112th Congress, the House adopted a Rules Package that identified electronic documents as a priority for the institution. Towards that end, we are asking all House stakeholders to work together on publicly releasing the House’s legislative data in machine-readable formats. The Rules of the House, adopted on the opening day of this Congress, directed the Committee on House Administration to establish and maintain electronic data standards for the House and its committees. We have asked that this standard be developed in conjunction with your office for the purpose of transitioning the House to more open data formats, such as XML. We believe that this legislative data, using standardized machine-readable formats, should be publicly available on House websites. The Clerk’s office should work to ensure the consistent public availability and utility of the House’s legislative data.

This an extremely important move. A joint letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader is a real commitment to data release, and means that the House is going to be adjusting how it shares legislative information online.

This has been a priority for the Sunlight Foundation since we were founded, from the 2007 Open House Project chapter on data access from Josh Tauberer, to the 2008 legislative appropriations language that was crafted to this end, and to OpenCongress.org's persistent advocacy on this topic.

Access to legislative data brings citizens closer to their representatives. When developers and programmers have better access to the data of Congress, they can better build the databases and tools that let the rest of us connect with the legislature.

This is a fantastic move from Speaker Boehner, and recognizes the transparency innovation happening outside Congress.

We're excited to see what this commitment will yield, and to work with the House and the community of legislative data users to help create the most effective access possible to House legislative data.

As House Republican leaders examine their options for House reforms, the 72 Hour Rule, or ReadTheBill, is always near the top of the list.

The form this reform will take, though, is far from clear.

Daniel recently gave details on the technical limitations a 72 Hour rule will face, noting that bills need to be shared better -- on THOMAS, in a machine-readable format, and available in bulk -- in order to maximize reuse online.

In addition to those technological hurdles, procedural hurdles also stand in the way of an effective 72 Hour Rule.

Presumptive Speaker Boehner has already taken one step past Speaker Pelosi on the ReadtheBill front, by committing to putting all non-emergency legislation online for 72 hours. The form this reform takes, however, will determine its strength and reliability.

Here are some procedural complications that could weaken a 72 Hour Rule.

Is it a rules change? It's unclear, so far, whether the 72 Hour Rule will be codified as a change to the House rules. Most focused advocacy for the ReadtheBill effort has focused on a particular proposal, H.Res 554 in the 111th Congress, which is primarily a rules change. If Republicans don't pass a rules change, then the rule will continue as an informal commitment from the Speaker of the House, with an uncertain future. A future Speaker wouldn't have to undo anything to walk away from it, and neither would Boehner, should he choose to.

What about amendments? H.Res. 554 punts on amendments. The bill actually contains Sense of the House language, basically asserting that major amendments should be online for an appropriate period of time. While this may seem like an oversight, further reflection reveals that requirements for amendments to be online can be tricky. Imagine if all bills were online for 72 hours before floor consideration, and all amendments were online for 72 hours before the same floor consideration. If that's the case, then no one can amend the bill they're reading, since the deadline for amendments would have already passed. The solution here may be to require bills to be online for 72 hours and amendments online for 24, but there's no clear consensus that that's the right solution. And that brings us to the second problem relating to amendments.

What about manager's amendments? Even if all amendments were online for one day before floor consideration, it's likely that large, contentious bills would get enormous managers amendments introduced at the last possible moment (whenever that moment may be). If it's just a day, that may still be a very short period of time to read and evaluate what may be an enormous and complex pile of compromises. Worse, these last minute changes are often the most contentious features of the bill -- they're the things being negotiated, after all. A strong, reliable 72 hour rule will eventually need to address managers amendments, and the complex negotiations they inevitably contain.

Depending on one's ideological relationship to any legislation in question, those negotiations can represent anything from valuable bipartisan compromise and careful deliberation all the way to vote-buying and backroom deals. One's feelings about the 72 hour rule also follow a similar pattern. How else do Michael Moore's meditation on the USA PATRIOT Act and the Republican opposition to the health care bill end up on the same script?

The Rules Committee Can Waive the Rules. Most bills are passed in the House under special rules, which govern debate, and can waive any House rule. Even rules about the Rules Committee can be waived by a rule reported out of the Rules committee and passed on the floor. Republican leadership, especially Eric Cantor, have been vocal about what they term a return to "regular order," but the Rules Committee is an extension of the prerogatives of the Speaker, one of the defining characteristics of the House. If the Senate is deliberative and slow, the House is decisive and authoritative, and the authority is the Speaker's, often expressed through the majority party's disproportionate control of the Rules Committee.

Self Executing Rules can change bills. Similarly, the special Rules from the Rules Committee can contain language that changes bills, essentially functioning as an amendment. Both parties have objected strongly to the other party's use of such rules, but, to our knowledge, no one has suggested a viable mechanism for reigning in this prerogative of the Rules Committee.

Conference Reports may be tricky. Most legislation will need to pass both chambers of Congress and go through a Conference Committee before heading to the President's desk. 72 hours for the initial House version would be nice, but without a chance to see what comes out of Conference, we won't know what's in the final law until too late. This can be tough, because each chamber can make changes to what comes out of the conference committee, and send the legislation back and forth. Should every iteration, if there are several, be subjected to 72 hours anew? We faced this difficulty before, and hedged, saying that conference reports and any major changes that follow should be online for 72 hours.

Is the Rule powerful? In addition to the fact that House Rules are waivable, some House Rules are simply ignored. A powerful 72 Hour Rule (like H.Res. 554) will change what is in order, effectively empowering the minority to raise a point of order against an offending motion. Without such an appeal to procedure, the requirement would be far weaker. Changes to the Congressional Record, for example, are supposed to only be typographical or grammatical, but Members regularly make far more substantive changes to their remarks as they appear. This is against the Rules, but essentially, no one cares. Even the best rule will need popular expectations to back it up.

This is actually true for all of the complications we've identified. Even the most well meaning 72 Hour Rule will be a seductive sacrifice for any Speaker who is faced with a potential legislative achievement. These are probably only some of the ways a public posting requirement could be evaded. Congressional floor procedures are incredibly complicated, and governed not just by Rules, but by complex precedents. The real arbiter of acceptable congressional procedure will ultimately always be the electorate. No one else can, or even should, have that kind of power of Congress.

Even so, we're hoping Speaker Boehner and Republican leaders choose to codify a strong, effective 72 Hour rule, and lives up to his promise, even when it's inconvenient, as he has readily acknowledged it will be.