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.

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

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.

The Office of Congressional Ethics has a new lease on life now that the House Republican leadership has reportedly included the independent watchdog in its 112th Congress rules package. OCE’s continued existence was an open question because it has to be renewed each Congress, and many Republicans -- including the incoming Speaker -- opposed its creation in 2008. (In recent months, a handful of Democrats, including those under investigation for ethics violations, came out against the office. Some opposed its creation from when it was first proposed.)

Legislatures have a hard time policing themselves effectively because of inherent conflicts of interest. Similarly, any attempt to use executive branch agencies (such as the Justice Department) to enforce Congressional ethics rules raises tricky separation of powers questions. The Office of Congressional Ethics avoids both of these problems because it is a legislative entity that is independent of day-to-day congressional control. In addition, unlike the House Ethics Committee, OCE investigates complaints from the public and is required to be open and transparent about its work. And finally, the OCE's role is appropriately limited, recognizing that Members of Congress are ultimately responsible for enforcing ethics rules.

The embrace of OCE by both parties strengthens its hand and creates a sense of permanence that future Speakers will find hard to undo. The Sunlight Foundation recommended that OCE continue to exist, as did a coalition of organizations. We are pleased to see that presumptive Speaker Boehner has stepped up to the plate.

We look forward to reviewing the proposed 112th House Rules for additional ethics reforms, and hope that the Senate will consider creating a similar watchdog.

Via Boehner's twitter feed, it looks like OCE will survive the transition to the 112th Congress. Here's the CNN story.

CNN is also reporting that a draft of the House Rules for the 112th Congress will be posted tomorrow.

We'll be following the draft closely, since Sunlight released a comprehensive Rules reform package.

To watch for, in addition to the very welcome OCE update: whether a 72 Hour ReadtheBill rule is included, and what kind of new information is required from committees.

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.

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.

Last week, the House Ethics Committee confirmed that they were investigating two Caribbean trips, in 2007 and 2008, taken by a number of lawmakers, all members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), that may have violated House rules forbidding lawmakers from accepting corporate funded travel. The Committee empaneled a subcommittee to investigate and appointed G.K. Butterfield, a CBC member and participant in a similar Caribbean trip in 2005, as the chairman of the investigation.

Unlike the 2007 and 2008 trips, Butterfield's visit to the Caribbean did not violate House rules, as the rules forbidding corporate sponsored travel were not passed until 2007 as part of a broad ethics bill. However, considering that the CBC is openly opposing this investigation and actively trying to reverse the rule that was broken by the Caribbean trip attendees, Butterfield appears to be in a fairly conflicted situation. While he has stated that "he would step down or recuse himself if he felt conflicted at any time during the investigation," I think it's fair to say that his personal relationships with the lawmakers who are under investigation is grounds enough for recusal. In any judicial setting -- whether a judge or jury -- there would be no question that a person in Butterfield's position would not be allowed to hear this case.

This is just another example of the need for a more independent ethics body to enforce the rules of Congress. It's getting tiring writing these posts about how the ethics process doesn't work. Can't you guys just get it right?

If not now, when?

Neither the House nor the Senate maintain any reasonable database of lawmaker votes. And while the House releases their votes in structured format, the Senate does not. There has long been a push to get Congress to adapt to changes that happened online a few years ago, but there has been minimal progress in the Senate. And yet, there is still hope.

Sen. Jim DeMint is circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter asking Rules and Administration Committee chair Chuck Schumer and ranking member Robert Bennett to release roll call votes in XML format to allow the public to interpret "our votes on its own." Tom Jones, a staffer for Sen. DeMint, explains the importance of this move to XML at The Next Right:

Currently the Senate posts its votes in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). In 1999, this was acceptable. But today plain HTML is the technological equivalent of a rotary telephone, adequate for a basic service but unable to perform the variety of functions modern technology now allows.

Instead of HTML, Senator DeMint is asking that votes be posted in XML (Extensible Markup Language). Without going to deep into the technology, XML would allow roll call votes in the United States Senate to be disseminated in a format that anyone can download, parse, disseminate, and distribute in any form they see fit. By having an authoritative XML stream provided by the Senate, application developers could build databases that could overlay different types of data onto Senate votes, public interest groups could match up policy background with votes, or any of a hundred other possible applications. The result would not be merely some whiz-bang technology, but rather a better informed electorate.

Unfortunately with the current HTML formatting, the best we can hope for is that outside groups successfully “scrape” the Senate webpage for votes and repackage the data on their website. This forces the public to either pay for the information from other websites or to rely on data which can be prone to errors. Such basic democratic information, how elected officials vote on important issues, should be available in the most transparent format, free and accessible to all Americans.

Like Sen. Lieberman's resolution to free CRS reports, this is an easy win for the Senate. Unfortunately, some senators will resist this move, as they fear easy access to their voting record could provide opportunities for others -- the public, opposition campaigns -- to make up their own minds with senatorial spin.

This reasoning is simply not legitimate in the present day. There is already a presumption of freedom for public information in the public; senators should take heed. If you want to urge your senator to sign on to Sen. DeMint's letter to the Rules Committee, you can find their contact information here.

Below is the full letter written by Sen. DeMint:

Senator Charles Schumer, Chairman  Senator Bob Bennett, Ranking Member

Committee on Rules and Administration  Committee on Rules and Administration

305 Russell Senate Office Building  305 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510    Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senators Schumer and Bennett:

We are writing today to ask you to change the Senate’s policy on the publishing of roll call votes so they are made available to the public in an XML format, in addition to what is provided on the Senate website today.

As Americans increasingly turn to internet to stay informed, the Senate as a body has a duty to promote timely and accurate reporting of our actions through the most current and effective technologies. Voting is the most basic Senate action and is of crucial importance to the public. Yet the Secretary of the Senate is constrained by an antiquated policy on how roll call votes can be published on the Senate website.

The Secretary of the Senate and the Sergeant at Arms have made strides in the development of the Senate website and the lobbying disclosure database. However, it is our understanding that the Rules Committee does not permit the Secretary to use "XML" for online voting records.

It is crucial that the Senate add XML. XML is more than merely a data format; it promotes the ability of citizens, the public, and the press to access and analyze Senate roll call votes. The addition of XML will allow the public to use computers to search, sort, and visualize voting records in new ways. While the costs associated with this transition would be negligible, the impact on transparency would be profound.

It is troubling that the current policy makes it more difficult for the public to access and disseminate information about Senate roll call votes.  This policy has created a situation where outside groups are forced to create databases that are more likely to contain errors and omissions. The public should not have to resort to subscription-based or mistake-ridden databases to easily obtain this information.

We understand the policy was originally implemented because “Senators want to provide their voting records to their constituents themselves.” The idea that the Senate would intentionally hamstring the distribution of roll call votes so Senators could put a better spin on them is concerning. The public is capable of interpreting our votes on its own.

The House of Representatives has been using XML for approximately five years with no adverse effects. It is time for the Senate to change its policy on sharing XML data and make roll call vote information easily available to the public. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to working with you improve the Senate’s legislative transparency in this way.