This week Sunlight marched up to Capitol Hill to deliver the petition signatures of more than 20,000 people who are demanding access to legislation for at least 72 hours before a new law is debated.

It's simple: legislation affects all of our lives, and it's a no-brainer that Americans be able to read and respond to a bill efore it's passed - much less a no-brainer that our representatives should read it.

People signed the petition, called their member of Congress, took a picture, tweeted, and kept it in the news.

With over 20,000 signatures and counting, it was time to make sure the main proponents of the bill we want passed - sponsor Rep. Brian Baird (WA-3)  and John Culberson (TX-7) - knew that despite recent drawbacks, people still want this simple legislation.

We gave Reps. Baird and Culberson our "Sunlight on the Hill" award to thank them for their dedication, and also presented them with a giant USB drive containing all the signatories.  We're digital folks, so a digital delivery seemed appropriate. As you an see in the video, the Representatives actually watched the names scroll through and looked into the eyes of those of you who sent in photos.

We promised there will be many thousands more to come, and we aim to deliver.

Let's get Read the Bill passed.  We shouldn't even need to be asking for this, it's so fundamental to democracy.  Please ask your friends to sign the petition and call their member of Congress.

There's just no longer an excuse for 72 hours not to be a bare minimum of what we can expect from our government.

Yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation and more than 20 organizations and individuals delivered a letter to Speaker of the House Pelosi, Minority Leader Boehner, House Rules Committee Chairwoman Slaughter, and Rules Ranking Member Dreier calling for a Rules Committee hearing to explore the benefits of amending House Rules to require that legislation be posted online for 72 hours prior to consideration.

We believe that it is fundamental to our democratic principles that Members of Congress, their staff, the public and the press have the opportunity to read and digest legislation before it comes to the House floor.

A hearing at this time is appropriate and necessary to move stalled 72-hour rule legislation forward. House and Senate leaders understand the importance of providing online access to legislation and have indicated some willingness to make health care legislation available prior to a vote. Those promises are appreciated, but an ad hoc approach to allowing the public to read the bill is not sufficient. Members of Congress should be governed by a rule that ensures that all legislation is available to the public at specific online locations for a minimum number of hours.

A discharge petition calling for a vote on H. Res. 554, a 72-Rule resolution sponsored by Rep. Brian Baird and John Culberson, garnered 182 signatures, shy of the 218 needed to move the bill to the floor. While it is possible additional members will sign on, progress seems to have slowed in part because some members have raised questions about whether there may be any unforeseen consequences if a 72-hour rule is enacted. A hearing in the Rules Committee is can address those questions and go a long way towards moving this important legislation forward.

Along with the letter calling for a hearing, we delivered a petition with 21,000 signatures of individuals who joined Sunlight’s Read the Bill campaign.  They, too, want Congress post legislation and conference reports on the Internet for 72 hours before debate begins.

Too many important pieces of legislation in this and earlier congresses have been rushed. A 72-hour rule gives the public the opportunity to weigh in with their representatives before debate begins, so that their opinions can be considered and, where appropriate, used to improve bills before they become law. We don’t see a downside to such a rule, but any questions about the impact of a 72-hour rule should be addressed at a hearing. We hope after reading our letter that the leaders in the House and the Rules Committee agree.

As noted below, the Baucus health care bill was finally released in legislative language (soon to be available on Open Congress) -- finally. The bill has jumped from 262 pages in plain language to 1,502 page in legislative language. Ezra Klein does a good job of explaining why the bill is so long:

...writing laws is not like writing blog posts, or newspaper articles: It requires an archaic, clunky vernacular that spends a lot of time explaining how one piece of text amends another piece of text, and expends a lot of words clarifying the most technical matters at the most granular level. Legal language requires more words than plain English, just as Chinese uses more characters. When people complain that legislation is slightly longer than a very long book, they're saying something about their understanding of the difference between legal language and plain English, not about the law in question.

This is perfectly true and important to note. Bills that cover a giant issue like health care reform are bound to really long. This is still no excuse for Congress to not read or review the contents of the legislation (not that Klein is making this argument).

The Finance Committee's original, plain language bill version did a decent job covering the major parts of the legislation. I don't think any reasonable person is going to be surprised by the insurance mandates or Medicare waste reduction or, if it's included, a version of the public option. These pieces have been debated and read over and over again. What should be most concerning are the provisions that no one is talking about, the enticements inserted for specific states or specific industries that fly under the radar.

Bloomberg reports on some of these enticements in a report today. Increased Medicaid funding for Sen. Harry Reid's Nevada, extra money for Medicare Advantage recipients in Sen. Bill Nelson's Florida and Sen. Ron Wyden's Oregon, breaks for unions and high risk workers (miners). These are just a few of the enticements inserted into the bill in obscure legislative jargon. We aren't sure what other nuggets could be out there.

The final bill should be made available for at least 72 hours prior to consideration so that these provisions can be found out and determined if they are harmful or not. There have been too many instances of bills passing in the past with small provisions slipped in that have a large effect.

Republican Minority Leader John Boehner is planning on introducing a resolution that would require House committees to post "within 24 hours the actions taken" by the committees. While vague, this would be a positive transparency provision to adopt.

Already we are seeing committees move in this direction. The House Committee on Energy & Commerce and the House Committee on Education & Labor did an excellent job of posting committee votes on amendments during the health care bill mark up in July. Almost all of the House's debate over the health care bill has been done in a transparent fashion, so far.

Codifying these advances into the House rules would be a very positive step. Seeing as how some committees are already moving in this direction I would hope that the majority will not see Boehner's introduction of this resolution as simply a partisan move, but rather take a serious look at this proposal.

While the country remains divided over major issues, there is one issue that the public can agree on: transparency. A new Rasmussen poll shows that 83% of the public says that bills should be posted online prior to consideration. There is little partisan breakdown in the poll:

Among voters, there is no partisan disagreement on the issue. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans, 76% of Democrats and 92% of voters not affiliated with either party favor posting non-emergency bills online for the public to read before they are voted on by Congress.

You can help push Congress to pass the Read the Bill bill here.

In response to the growing support for a discharge petition to force a vote on the Read the Bill bill, Rep. Tim Walz is circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to enforce the already existing 72 hour rule.

The House Rules require that all bills be publicly available for 72 hours prior to consideration. This is rule is frequently waived by the Rules Committee at the behest of leadership and has been for many years. There is no requirement in the "Dear Colleague" letter that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer enforce the rule, simply a suggestion. This is one reason to support the passing the Read the Bill bill over this "Dear Colleague" letter. The 72 hour rule should be written into the Rules, not left to the whim of the leadership.

Another reason to support the Read the Bill bill is that the current, oft-waived 72 hour rule simply states that bills be made publicly available. There is no specification as to what defines "publicly available." It has always been Sunlight's belief that public equals online. To ensure that Congress defines public as online Rules need to be altered to specify where bills will be made publicly available. The Read the Bill bill does this by requiring online posting of bills for 72 hours before consideration.

Help us support the 72 hour rule by getting your congressman to support the Read the Bill bill.

Yesterday, Lisa Rosenberg wrote about the discharge petition for H. Res. 554, the Read the Bill Bill. Already the petition has had an effect. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she would not bring the health care reform bill to the floor until it had been online for 72 hours. The discharge petition would allow the bill to be brought to a vote without committee consideration. This could be the only way to get a vote on the bill this year. Currently, there are 173 signers of the discharge petition -- all of those signatures came in two days! The petition needs 218 signatures to force the bill to the floor.

At this moment there are only three Democrats who have signed onto the petition. They are Reps. Brian Baird, Walt Minnick and Parker Griffith. There are 32 Democratic cosponsors of H. Res. 554 who have yet to sign the petition. If you care to call them and let them know that they should sign the petition, please do. You can see the list below and find their contact information at Open Congress.

1. Michael Arcuri (NY-24)
2. Dan Boren (OK-02)
3. Leonard Boswell (IA-03)
4. Bobby Bright (AL-02)
5. Chris Carney (PA-10)
6. Ben Chandler (KY-06)
7. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
8. Jim Costa (CA-20)
9. Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-03)
10. Lincoln Davis (TN-04)
11. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
12. Chet Edwards (TX-17)
13. Gene Green (TX-29)
14. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
15. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
16. Frank Kratovil (MD-01)
17. Daniel Lipinski (IL-03)
18. Dave Loebsack (IA-02)
19. Dan Maffei (NY-25)
20. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
21. Jim Marshall (GA-08)
22. Kendrick Meek (FL-17)
23. Charlie Melancon (LA-03)
24. Mike Michaud (ME-02)
25. Dennis Moore (KS-03)
26. Mike Quigley (IL-05)
27. Mike Ross (AR-04)
28. Mark Schauer (MI-07)
29. Heath Shuler (NC-11)
30. Adam Smith (WA-09)
31. Jackie Speier (CA-12)
32. Gene Taylor (MS-04)

The Read the Bill bill (H. Res. 554) continues to gain support in Congress and has nearly reached 100 cosponsors in the House. The cosponsors in the House fall across all ideological lines from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican. The cross-partisan support for this bill demonstrates the wide appeal that legislative transparency is garnering. When you can have Jeff Flake and Jesse Jackson, Jr. support the same bill, you know you're doing something right.

You can help increase the number of cosponsors for the bill by going to ReadTheBill.org and calling your congressman to tell them to support the bill.

The missing piece in the health care reform puzzle was dropped in Congress today. After months of negotiations with Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus released a copy of his bill. Baucus' Finance Committee was the last committee to introduce legislation on health care reform. As Ezra Klein notes at the Washington Post, "the Finance Committee's Chairman's Mark (the first draft of the bill) is written in plain English, rather than legislative-speak, so it's actually comprehensible to the interested layman." If you never understood the legal language of legislation, now's your chance to read a bill that you can actually understand. Mark-up on the bill will begin on September 22.

"I don't have to read it, or know what's in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways." That's Sen. Jim Inhofe explaining why he doesn't need to read the health care bill.

There has been a lot of pressure on lawmakers this summer to prove that they have read the health care bill (of which there are numerous versions) and understand its contents. The Sunlight Foundation has been supporting a bipartisan resolution in the House to require all bills be posted online for at least 72 hours for lawmakers and the public to read. Hopefully, there are more considerate lawmakers who would like to take the time to read and understand what they are voting on.

Luckily, and thanks to much public pressure, all announced versions of the health care bill are currently available to read. I'll post them below just in case Sen. Inhofe changes his mind.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Draft House Education & Labor Committee Draft House Ways & Means Committee Draft Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee Draft

If you want your lawmakers to read the bill go to our Read the Bill site and let them know how you feel.