Sen. Blanche Lincoln has put herself front and center in opposing efforts by her party's leadership to pass or implement comprehensive caps on carbon emissions in the United States. She opposes the proposed cap and trade legislation that passed the House of Representatives and has been touted by President Barack Obama and senators John Kerry, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman. Similarly, she has signed on to legislation that would block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing their own regulations to cap carbon emissions should cap and trade legislation fail to pass Congress. In this effort she is aided by a coterie of former staffers who currently lobby for a variety of interests seeking to weaken or derail carbon capping whether through legislation or the EPA's rule-making authority.

Six of Lincoln's former staffers currently lobby for interests invested in influencing carbon capping legislation. These interests include oil & gas trade groups, agriculutural companies, the airplane industry and biofuel and bioenergy firms. As chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Lincoln holds a powerful position to influence carbon capping legislation and she has made no secret of her desire to block the legislation.

(For a full visualization of Sen. Blanche Lincoln's former staffers lobbying for the energy and climate industries click here or the image to the right.)

The most influential of Lincoln's former staffers is Kelly Bingel, a lobbyist for Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti. Bingel is a former chief of staff to Lincoln and has been called "Sen. Lincoln’s alter ego." Bingel's clients include two incredibly powerful organizations opposed to carbon capping: the American Petroleum Institute (API), the lead trade group for the oil industry, and Koch Industries, one of the largest oil manufacturing, trading and investment companies in the country. David Koch, one of the two owners of Koch Industries, is a big contributor to conservative movement organizations and is an outspoken opponent of cap and trade legislation. Koch has invested millions in various conservative organizations that have led lobbying and grassroots stimulation efforts to get people to advocate to their lawmakers to oppose cap and trade legislation. API spent $7.32 million on lobbying last year, almost double what it spent in 2008. API states that any carbon capping legislation or regulations will cost the industry jobs and increase taxes.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lincoln is currently the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry from 2005 to 2010. She has received, through her campaign committee and her leadership political action committee (PAC),$309,500 from the industry.

Another former staffer to Lincoln, Ben Noble, lobbies for organizations opposed to carbon capping efforts including a variety of agricultural interests. Agricultural companies and trade groups have a major stake in cap and trade legislation as it moves through Congress. According to the EPA, agriculture accounts for 6 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The industry is seeking to avoid carbon capping regulation in cap and trade legislation or through EPA regulation.

One of Noble's clients, the USA Rice Federation, opposes cap and trade legislation and recently praised Lincoln for her stance against the legislation, "We applaud Chairman Lincoln for putting the American economy and jobs first in this debate. While there are a number of questions surrounding the issue of climate change, there is absolutely no question about the severe impact that pending legislation and regulation would have on our economy and jobs."

Lincoln is the top recipient of campaign contributions from a variety of agricultural industries including agricultural services, crop producers, food processors and meat processors and plants. Since 2005, Lincoln has received $789,372 from the agribusiness sector.

Both Bingel and Noble also represent organizations generally supportive of cap and trade legislation, so long as it contains language that allows them to maximize their profits under the new system. Bingel represents the electrical utility trade group the Electric Edison Institute (EEI). EEI, which includes members who have received specific benefits in the House-passed cap and trade legislation, sees the legislation as an openning into new markets with high potential to increase their share of energy distribution.

Noble represents the massive bio-tech, agribusiness firm Monsanto. Monsanto seeks to gain profits from a cap and trade system by getting farms and agribusiness to switch to a "no-till" method of farming. The "no-till" method would require farmers to purchase herbicides and seeds made by Monsanto. The lobbying effort by Monsanto is detailed in Tom Philpott's explanation at Grist.

Last week, Lincoln released her first campaign advertisement in the uphill battle to retain her Senate seat. The ad touts her continued opposition to the passage of cap and trade legislation. This continues her statement from last year that cap and trade is a "complete non-starter."

(Revision: Todd Wooten no longer lobbies for Enerkem. He is currently employed by Duke University.)

Sunlight has no stated position on grassroots lobbying disclosure, but I thought that this story was worth flagging as I'd imagine it is the clearest cut argument for such disclosure:

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization,” said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville’s Hispanic community. “It’s this type of activity that undermines Americans’ faith in democracy.”

The faked letter from Creciendo Juntos was signed by “Marisse K. Acevado, Asst Member Coordinator,” an identity and position at Creciendo Juntos that do not exist.

The person who sent the letter has not been identified, but he or she was employed by a Washington lobbying firm called Bonner & Associates.

It turns out that this isn't the first time that Bonner & Associates has forged letters on an issue. In terms of disclosure, Bonner & Associates has not filed a lobbying disclosure report since 2001, so we have no clue which client is paying the firm to forge letters and lie to lawmakers.

This reminds me of a story that got the whole lobbying disclosure train rolling back in the 1930s (lobbying disclosure as an issue had been around since the late 19th century, but only limited action was taken until the 1930s). During debate over the Public Utility Holding Company Act, a bill to regulate utility companies, there was serious concern over the lobbying efforts of the industry. Sen. Hugo Black, a long time critic of industry lobbying efforts and a future Supreme Court justice, set up an investigatory committee to examine efforts by the utility companies to block the bill's passage. Black's investigation was aided by a tip from Congressman Dennis Driscoll of upstate New York. Driscoll became suspicious when he received 800 telegrams in opposition to the bill, in alphabetical order, as if read from the phone book, from the residents of one town in his district. As it turned out, Associated Gas & Electric of Ithaca, New York paid an employee to "develop" one thousand telegrams to send to the congressman. This revelation of outright forgery helped push the bill to victory and necessitated a new provision in the bill: the disclosure of paid lobbying for all utility holding companies.

Perhaps someone might want to look into the despicable efforts of Bonner & Associates to trick lawmakers. Who knows what else is out there?

After passing the cap and trade bill in rush, we are beginning to see what was included in the last hours prior to the vote. According to the Washington Times, the final 300 page amendment to the 1,200 page bill appears to have been filled with sweeteners for wavering congressmen.

The Washington Times reported on the actual contents of the cap and trade manager's amendment -- those 300 pages that dropped at the last second -- and found a sweetener for one lawmaker likely aimed at enticing her to vote for the bill. The bill contained a nearly unintelligable section creating a federally authorized power administration with $3.5 billion in funds to distribute to renewable energy and development projects in Ohio. The power administration was championed by Rep. Marcy Kaptur and its last minute inclusion likely helped obtain her vote and other wavering lawmakers from Ohio.

We have little idea how many sweeteners were added into the 300 page manager's amendment and it is very difficult to determine due to the obscure language used in the amendment. Take, for example, the language of the Kaptur power administration:

SEC. 199. DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION FOR RENEWABLE

POWER BORROWING AUTHORITY. (a) DETERMINATION.—No later than 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Energy, in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce, shall—

(1) determine any geographic area within the contiguous United States that lacks a Federal power marketing agency; (2) develop a plan or criteria for the geographic areas identified in paragraph (1) regarding invest- ment in renewable energy and associated infrastruc- ture within an area identified in paragraph (1); and (3) identify any Federal agency within an area in paragraph (1) that has, or could develop, the abil- ity to facilitate the investment in paragraph (2).

(b) REPORT.—The Secretary of Energy, in coordina- tion with the Secretary of Commerce, shall provide the de- terminations made under subsection (a) to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representa- tives. (c) ESTABLISHMENT.—Based upon the determina- tions made pursuant to subsection (a), the Secretary of Energy, in coordination with the Secretary of Commerce, shall recommend to the Committee on Energy and Com- merce of the House of Representatives the establishment of any new Federal lending authority, including authoriza- tion of additional lending authority for existing Federal agencies, not to exceed $3,500,000,000 per geographic area identified in subsection (a)(1).

(d) AUTHORIZATION.—$25,000,000 is authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2010 to carry out the provi- sions of this section.

Now for those looking to see how the last minute changes affect voting behavior, this kind of language isn't helpful at all. There are even more obscure sections of the bill that could contain vote-getting sweeteners. Not that I'm advocating for plain language bills or anything (laws are written in legal language for a reason), but the language in this amendment is particularly -- and likely intentionally -- obtuse.

Of course, one of the biggest problems is that we were given under 24 hours to read these 300 pages of obscure language. So, we are brought reporting after the bill is passed teasing out the actual contents, which appear to include vote-attracting sweeteners. No one could have realistically known what was in the bill, and inserted for whom, before the vote took place.

If you want to see if you can find these sweeteners, please have at it. I spent a good amount of time reading the bill last week (what a concept) and wouldn't mind some help pulling out the choice sections that were inserted to gain specific votes. Here's the pdf. Let me know what you find in the comments. And don't forget to tell your congressman to Read the Bill in the future.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:

Last Friday evening's June 26th program, CNN's Lou Dobbs broadcasted a piece by correspondent Louise Schiavone about the Cap and Trade Energy Bill that the House of Representatives was to vote on and pass later that evening. Schiavone interviewed Jake Brewer, Sunlight’s engagement director, who said, "This is the kind of bill that's going to affect our economy on a massive scale, our climate, our national security, and is not the kind of thing to be taken lightly. The opacity of this process is -- to be perfectly honest, it's infuriating." Schiavone then stated erroneously that Sunlight opposed the bill. For the record, Sunlight has no position on the content of the bill itself, but advocates for the Congress to put all non-emergency legislation online for 72 hours before voting on it. The transcript can be read here, and the video is below.

Along those lines, Sunlight’s advocacy for the 72-hour rule helped generate a couple of good editorials. Heather Long, deputy editorial page editor for The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News , wrote a strong editorial in favor of the 72-hour rule. "It's so basic it should not even have to be said: Lawmakers should know what they are voting on. In order to do that, they need time to review bills, and that takes more than a few hours for things as lengthy and complex as climate change and health care."

The (Olympia, Wash.) Olympian editorializes about U.S. Rep. Brian Baird (Wash.) introducing House Resolution 554, which would require the House to honor the 72-hour rule with all non-emergency bills and conference reports. "If Congress is at all interested in restoring public trust and confidence in its operations, the members will pass Congressman Baird’s 72-hour rule," the editorial says.

National Public Radio's Don Gonyea reports on the Obama administration backtracking on openness, centering on the White House's refusal to make public its visitor logs. He quotes Melanie Sloan, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s director, "Once all the pretty speeches were over in the first couple of days, the record now isn't quite so great." Regarding the visitor logs, "Not only did the administration refuse to provide those records, we have sued them, and... they are making the same argument that the Bush administration did, that these are presidential records, even though this argument has already lost in court," Melanie said. Gonyea quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight's director, noting the positive steps taken by the administration on opening government data. "What the administration is beginning to deliver is an openness when it comes to a certain level of White House deliberations and with respect to government data. Time will tell how this all plays out, but even in the first six months of the administration, we're seeing far more openness than we've seen in modern history." Listen here

The Wall Street Journal used Center for Responsive Politics data to show how the financial industry did something quite surprising...They cut spending on lobbying and campaign contributions. In this year’s first quarter, banks and other financial institutions spent $104.7 million to lobby Congress and the administration, down 8% from the same period last year. And the industry made $19.9 million in political contributions in the first three months of 2009, which is a 65% decrease from the same period in 2007 and a 13% drop from the same period in 2005, just after the last presidential election cycle, the Journal reports. Since CRP has been keeping records, the financial industry has been the top giver of political contributions and the top spender on lobbying activities, giving $2.2 billion since 1990 and spending $3.6 billion on lobbying since 1998. This year’s decline coincides with the public’s diminished image of financial institutions. Meanwhile, the health care industry is spending the most on lobbying these days, increasing its spending in the first quarter by 12% to $127.1 million.

The Boston Globe highlighted a CRP analysis that shows how consumer groups that favor health reform are being "decidedly outspent and out-lobbied by drug manufacturers, insurers, HMOs, and doctors' associations." In the first quarter of this year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest spender on lobbying since 1998, and the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America together spent $22.5 million to influence the debate. In contrast, Families USA, a leading advocate for health reform from the consumer’s perspective, has spent $10,000 on lobbying this year.

Writing at The Wall Street Journal's "Digits" blog, Marisa Taylor reported on the Personal Democracy Forum conference held earlier this week in New York. She quotes Ellen from a closing panel, “I think that we’re going to look back on 2009 as the year in which the tide shifted." Rather than placing the burden of government transparency on non-profits to create online databases that track government spending, new government Web sites like Data.gov and Recovery.gov are creating a “remarkable shift in responsibility” wherein the government must explain itself to its citizenry, Ellen said. But Congress will be “the tougher nut to crack."

Sunlight Labs’ launch of TransparencyCorps at the PDF conference generated good media interest. Eliza Krigman with the National Journal quoted Ellen, "Sunlight and future partners can provide micro-tasks that when aggregated, help solve research and data analysis problems when computers alone cannot properly scrutinize government information." Columbia Journalism Review’s Clint Hendler quoted Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs’ director, “We have a problem at Sunlight. That is that our government gives us data that our computers can’t understand, and there’s nothing we can do about it but work harder.” Marshall Kirkpatrick with ReadWriteWeb wrote, "The innovative system is a pleasure to use and is being open sourced for other organizations interested in crowdsourcing similar tasks. You can honestly do something useful and important in 5 minutes or less on this site." And on his Joho the Blog site, David Weinberger, co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” highlighted both TransparencyCorps' launch and OpenCongress' redesign.

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed the cap and trade bill after an incredibly messy process left little time for congressmen and the public to digest the final version of the bill. I think that process taught us a lot about how Congress mangles procedure, but also, in some ways, how Congress is trying to be more transparent, but not quite getting it right.

Looking back at what happened with cap and trade, we see that Congress, inexplicably, released a new version of the bill on a Monday evening before a Friday vote, with an explanation that this would not be the final version. This bill, the printed version, did not have a bill number written into the header, instead it look like this: H.R. __.

This what we'd call a discussion draft, and it's something that we've been seeing Congress release a lot more lately -- likely due to pressure to make their operations more transparent. The managers of the cap and trade bill could have easily not released this discussion draft and dropped the whole new bill on Thursday or Friday. Instead, they released part of the bill on Monday and then 300 more pages on Thursday night. It's great that Congress is releasing discussion drafts. They increase the ability of the public to peek inside to internal debates as they occur and hopefully have a say in the process. However, the time to publish discussion drafts is not the week a bill is being voted on, it's when the bill is still being formed in a location with necessary transparency rules, like a committee hearing.

So this brings up an important point: when is the best time to read the bill? In many respects there needs to be a rule requiring bills to be posted online 72 hours prior to consideration for lawmakers and the public to know what is in the bill. But that isn't the best period for citizen engagement in the legislative process outside of telling your congressman to vote "yea" or "nay". The real sausage making happens in committees and we are seeing efforts by committees to release discussion drafts and versions of bills that they are working on. This is where discussion drafts are useful -- not in final moments before consideration occurs.

Let's run down areas in the legislative process where citizen engagement can have an impact and what Congress ought to be doing to increase transparency and provide a window for engagement:

1) Committee process - Where the real work gets done. Release of discussion drafts, manager's statements, chairman's mark would allow for much greater engagement by citizens in the process and would help other lawmakers and their staff familiarize themselves with the process that created legislation.

2) Prior to consideration - Pass a 72 hour rule so that all bills must be made publicly available online for 72 hours before consideration. While there is less chance for direct input by citizens this allows for organization in favor or in opposition of both the bill and proposed amendments to the bill. This also provides time for lawmakers and their staff to read the bill.

3) Post passage - This would be the area covered by President Obama's five day bill posting pledge. I don't think there is too much value here as the President likely already knows whether he will sign or veto a given piece of legislation. More transparency theater than anything else.

The next big debate in Congress will be around health care. Hopefully, Congress doesn't only provide adequate time prior to consideration for the public to read the bill, but also continues to make efforts to provide drafts to the public during the committee process.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies from the week:

CNN interviewed Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, in an article on lobbyists and the need for disclosure of their interactions with congressional lawmakers and other federal officials.

Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times reported on the fact that, five months into his administration, President Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited the five days, as he promised during his election campaign. She noted how open government and other watchdog groups have criticized the president for not living up to his pledge. Seelye quotes Ellen as saying it’s less important for the president to wait before signing a bill than it is for the Congress to wait 72 hours before voting on it. “There isn’t anybody in this town who doesn’t know that commenting after a bill has been passed is meaningless." The article also has an accompanying video.

Politico's Victoria McGrane reported on how the Senate is considering putting all their office expenses — including staff salaries — online, as well as requiring campaign fundraising reports to be published on the Web. The mere fact that the Senate leadership has conducted a whip count is an encouraging sign for the reforms' passage, McGrane writes. And she quotes Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s , “They wouldn’t be talking about bringing it up for a vote if it wasn’t pretty solid."

The Washington Examiner reports on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington calling on the Obama administration to release the names of health care executives who have visited the White House. “If you are going to criticize other people for secrecy, you better have an open door,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director. “They talk about transparency more than they exhibit it.”

Brian Wingfield at Forbes.com wrote about the health care reform debate and linked to Sunlight’s senior writer Paul Blumenthal's blog post about former senators Tom Daschle and Bob Dole releasing a health care plan while being health care lobbyists.

Lisa Wangsness with The Boston Globe reported on bloggers from the medical, technology, and patient advocacy worlds organizing to win the right of patients to gain access to their computerized health records from their doctors in an electronic format. She quotes the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Deven McGraw noting that federal law already entitles patients to easy, inexpensive access to their health records in whatever format they exist. Too often, she said, patients, doctors, and hospitals are not aware of the law. She added that Congress included $19 billion in the stimulus package for electronic medical records systems. Patients and their doctors need to have a clearer understanding of that right, she said.

The New York Times picked up Anne C. Mulkern’s Greenwire piece on how money has helped to grease the skids of the Cap and Trade Energy Bill on Capitol Hill. The report used data from the Center for Responsive Politics to show how industry with a stake in the legislation has attempted to influence the vote in their favor.

Sunlight’s concern over how fast the energy bill Congress is moving the generated a number of editorials in support of our position. The (St. Paul, Minn.) Pioneer Press editorialized about the energy bill, "Has anybody read those 1,200 pages?” The editorial says "it is a big deal," and the "virtues of transparency don't apply only to the work of one's opponents. If the price of broader public understanding of major legislation is a slower process, good." And the editorial ended with, "To our friends at the Sunlight Foundation, we say: Keep the pressure on." The Chicago Tribune also editorialized about Cap and Trade. "Remember that gargantuan climate change bill we told you about last week? It's gotten bigger. Over the weekend, the bill grew from 946 pages to 1,201 pages, according to the Sunlight Foundation. It's still changing, with important amendments in flux. And The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise wrote a Cap and Trade editorial as well that used many of Sunlight's talking points.

ReadWriteWeb's Marshal Kirkpatrick wrote about the U.S. Office of Management and Budget issuing new reporting guidelines this week for recipients of the $787 billion Recovery Act. "The normally polite geek watchdog organization the Sunlight Foundation has come out swinging," Kirkpatrick wrote, referencing Ellen's blog post from yesterday where she called it a "significant failure" on the part of the administration by not living up to its promise for full and complete disclosure. Kirkpatrick also mentions how the Senate is now offering mashup-friendly XML (extensible markup language) feeds for Senate voting history. He lifted quotes from Sunlight's policy director John Wonderlich from a Politico article from April on the arguments against the chamber offering the voting history in XML. "The secretary of the Senate has cited a general standing policy that they're not supposed to present votes in a comparative format, that senators have the right to present their votes however they want to."

Speaking of the OMB’s new reporting guidelines, NextGov.com’s Aliya Sternstein noted other problems. The latest guidance does not include previous instructions from an earlier incarnation directing agencies to configure news feeds that would allow citizens to receive automatic updates. She interviewed Craig Jennings from OMB Watch, who said for standardization purposes, "it does make sense that there is some restriction to the raw data . . . to make sure [that, for example,] 'assn' equals association, 'Boeing Inc.' is the same as Boeing Incorporation."

Thanks.

Today is the day that the House plans to vote on the cap and trade bill that has mysteriously changed this week. Last night, the bill changed again. We are now looking at an additional 300-pages that will be considered as amending H.R. 2998, the replacement bill of origins unknown. This is what the House Rules Committee tells us:

[I]n lieu of the amendment recommended by the Committee on Energy and Commerce now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of H.R. 2998, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted.

This means that H.R. 2998, which will be considered as an amendment in the form of a substitute, will include an additional 300 pages approved by the Rules Committee that will not be voted on. Let me see if I can run this down quickly and succinctly:

1. The original bill, H.R. 2454, approximately 1,000 pages, was reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
2. It was replaced this week by H.R. 2998, 1,201 pages, which will be voted on as an amendment in the form of a substitute.
3. The Rules Committee, last night, released a committee report that includes a 300-page amendment to H.R. 2998. This 300-page amendment, the Waxman amendment (#121), is considered as adopted upon an affirmative vote for H.R. 2998, the amendment in the form of the substitute.

This means that we are looking at 300 extra pages added to the bill overnight. Stay tuned for more and go to ReadTheBill.org to tell your congressman that we need time to read the bills.

The pace for the cap and trade bill continues apace. Today, the House Rules Committee posted to their web site the bill number, H.R. 2998, for the draft of unknown origin that has become a point of much debate over the past few days. This bill, H.R. 2998, is set to replace H.R. 2454, the bill previously reported out of committee. As I wrote two days ago, we have little idea as to the negotiations that transformed the approximately 1,000 page H.R. 2454 into the 1,200 page H.R. 2998. If nothing else it reminded me of South Park's underpants gnomes (for an image that might help explain the image below, see here). And thus I present this image that represents, to the best of our knowledge, how this bill grew overnight:

Phase 1: Report H.R. 2454 out of committee

Phase 2: ?

Phase 3: Replace H.R. 2454 with H.R. 2998

The House Rules Committee is currently deciding which of the 224 amendments proposed will be allowed a vote on the floor of the House. That could take a while. In the mean time we'll all twiddle our thumbs and try to figure out what process led to this compromise bill.

Or you can go to ReadTheBill.org and tell Congress that they shouldn't let this happen again. Tell them to support H. Res. 554 and require bills to be posted online for at least 72 hours prior to consideration.

So, it looks as though the cap and trade bill will continue to sail toward a Friday vote despite the final version not being actually finalized. As I noted yesterday, this process prevents both the public and the lawmakers on Capitol Hill from having adequate time to review a critically important bill. The hurried process also spells danger for the many activist organizations and other actors seeking to have an effect on the end result. How can you lobby when you don't know what you're lobbying on? And how can you get your supporters to call Congress when you don't know what to tell them?

Now some of these actors may already have a wing-tip or birkenstock in the door with their lobbyists, but that doesn't do much for activating their membership. If no one knows what a bill will contain until 24 hours prior to consideration it is remarkably difficult to get a message to your representative to express your position on how they ought to vote. Even more complicated is to organize a membership around amendments to support or oppose. And this is, in many ways, why this process occurs. It stymies public interaction and voices, whether independent of a larger group or not.

Now this does not solely apply to the party in power now. Historically, leadership aims to control the pace of legislation. And why wouldn't they? In Congress, time is just another tool of power.

In this case, time is being used to prevent citizen action and to reduce outside pressure on potentially wayward lawmakers. If the leadership wants to pass a bill and fears that calls from constituents to certain lawmakers may place the vote in jeopardy, rushing the bill to the floor will prevent an inundation of calls, especially from members of organizations organized around a particular bill.

If you are the Sierra Club or the Chamber of Commerce, you're getting squeezed right now. (The same thing happened with groups organized around the FISA Amendments Act last year.) For the general public that wants their voice heard, you're getting squeezed even harder.

This is a critical reason for Congress to establish a 72 hour rule. Not only does Congress need to read their bills. Not only does the public writ large deserve a chance to read the bills. But so do advocacy groups that organize and drive much of the public support or opposition to specific pieces of legislation.

If you think that bills should be made available for at least 72 hours before they are considered, go to ReadTheBill.org and tell your congressman to support legislation to create a 72 hour rule.

There is currently some wacky legislative maneuvering going on with H.R. 2454, the cap and trade energy bill, that puts a serious spotlight on the failure of Congress to make bills properly available. According to the New York Times:

House Democratic leaders late last night released a revamped, 1,201-page energy and global warming bill (pdf), clearing the way for floor debate Friday even though it remains uncertain if they will have the votes to pass it.

The House bill posted on the Rules Committee Web site has grown from the 946-page version adopted last month in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Sources on and off Capitol Hill said the bulk of the changes largely reflect requests from the eight other committees that also had jurisdiction over the bill, including the Ways and Means Committee and Science and Technology Committee.

The bill is only available online at the House Rules Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced." Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454, that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees, there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer -- but it's still being considered as H.R. 2454. Stay with me here.

Here's the timeline:

Introduced - 5/15/09

Reported with amendments out of Energy & Commerce - 6/5/09

Discharged by Education & Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees - 6/5/09

Discharged by Financial Services, Science & Technology, Transportation, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Ways & Means Committees - 6/19/09

Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 90 - 6/19/09 (This version is 946 pages)

Submitted to House Rules Committee - 6/22/09, 4:22pm (This version is 1,201 pages)

So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.

This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.

And that isn't even the worst part. This, apparently, isn't even the final bill. The final bill will be a manager's amendment that will be drafted later this week! From a posting on the House Rules Committee, we know that the deadline to submit amendments is Thursday at 9:30am. And there is talk that this will be voted on on Friday. Thus, the final version of this bill will likely only be available for less than 24 hours.

Sunlight has been advocating for all bills to be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration. It doesn't look like that is going to happen here. If you think that Congress should read the bills they vote on, you can tell your congressman to both support the Read the Bill resolution, H. Res. 554, and to give the public enough time to read the final version of the cap and trade bill, whenever that is made available.

As Open Left's Chris Bowers says about this process:

[Y]ou don't get to know what is in the bill until it is too late. Further, you get no chances to improve the bill.

This is an unacceptable process and it needs to change.