The Senate’s version of the health care bill was published on Wednesday, along with its CBO score. Since the first... View Article
Continue readingEvening Links
1) CQ looks at how getting a seat on the House Ways & Means Committee increases campaign contributions for new... View Article
Continue readingMighty Tiny Thomas
This post is from Sunlight's Policy Counsel, Daniel Schuman who normally blogs on the Sunlight Foundation Blog.
A few months ago, I posted a request on Sunlight Lab's wiki for someone to build a web tool that would make the links on Congress's legislative website, THOMAS, permanent. Although it seems odd, when users look up legislative information on THOMAS, such as bills and committee reports, they usually cannot bookmark or share the links because the URL goes dead after a couple of hours.
I had little faith that someone would answer my request to build permalinks, but Asa Hopkins has done so with a great new program called tinyThom.as.
Continue readingRecovery.gov’s Success
We spend a lot of time talking about how Government does a lot wrong with data. And we harass them and complain a lot to the extent that even I get on my own nerves. But the fact is, the people and programmers working on these projects on the inside are neither malicious nor incompetent. The problem isn't people, but a weird system of priorities and incentives that often leaves the citizen short-handed. After all, transparency isn't even an inkling the constitution (yet!) and I'm fairly certain that the framers of our constitution weren't really considering data portability when they drafted the Bill of Rights.
Continue readingTransparency, the Internet and Health Care Reform
The Senate health care reform bill (viewable here) contains numerous provisions that stress disclosure and transparency, specifically online disclosure and... View Article
Continue readingGillibrand Touts Transparency
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said today that the final version of health care legislation will be available for... View Article
Continue readingSenate Health Care Bill At Open Congress
Check it out. Our friends at Open Congress have the Senate health care bill online. This way you can read... View Article
Continue readingDemocratic Health Care Holdouts’ Ties to the Health Insurance Industry
The New York Times reports that there are three Democratic senators who are viewed as holdouts on a procedural vote... View Article
Continue readingDuty suspended, contributions tendered
Dave Maass reports on the latest round of tariff suspensions in San Diego City Beat, doing a nice job of following the money between beneficiaries of these measures that reduce taxes for a small number of beneficiaries (usually one) and the members of Congress who propose them.
Read it here. Real Times ongoing interest in tariff suspensions is collected .
Note the headline of course is inaccurate, but I couldnt resist. The duty has not yet been suspended, only proposed to be suspended. Still, writing a catchy tariff suspension headline was too much of a temptation to resist.
Continue reading“Cornerstone of Accountability and Transparency”
Just going to quote Norm Ornstein on the 72 hour rule: It is a model that Congress needs to follow... View Article
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