Today Rep. Mike Quigley introduced the Transparency in Government Act, sweeping legislation that addresses issues ranging from making Members’ reports... View Article
Continue readingSenate Bailout Text on PublicMarkup
As the Senate moves forward today with the newest version of the bailout bill (now being referred to as the... View Article
Continue readingThe Other Provisions in the Senate Bailout Bill
An Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, a mental health parity bill, a package of tax break extensions, and tax breaks... View Article
Continue readingNew Bailout Bill in Senate
It looks like the Senate is moving forward today with a new bailout bill, which is available through the Senate... View Article
Continue readingUrge Congress to Read the Bill First, Part 2
The unexpected failure of the bailout proposal has given lawmakers and citizens a second chance to understand the details of... View Article
Continue readingUrge Congress to Read the Bill First
Today, the Sunlight Foundation is calling on Congress to exercise restraint, and give Members and the public sufficient time to... View Article
Continue readingOn Bailout Transparency
Congress took a real step today toward legislative transparency, proactively posting the proposed bailout legislation in public, online, in advance... View Article
Continue readingYou Can Markup the Bills on the Mortgage Industry Bail Out
Congress is moving rapidly to enact a gigantic taxpayer bailout of the financial sector, with a potential cost of $700... View Article
Continue readingGreat New Transparency News Resource
This is very cool. Our friends at VoterWatch have just launched a new 'Transparency Recap' -- a regularly updated overview of what bloggers are saying about government transparency and accountability. In their first roundup, VoterWatch highlights Sunlight's latest project, PublicMarkup.org (thanks!), a post from Free Government Information on a report about the National Archives' plan to provide online access to the Founding Fathers papers, All Things Whistleblower's reporting on the raid on the Office of the Special Counsel and on the home of Special Counsel Scott Bloch and the soft launch of the Center for Responsive Politics' newly redesigned OpenSecrets.org site.
We love roundups like this for keeping updated on the news that matters the most. Make sure to add VoterWatch to your feeds!
PublicMarkup.org Progress and Plan
In the month since PublicMarkup.org launched, we've gotten 121 comments on our draft reform legislation, the Transparency in Government Act of 2008. The media and blog coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable, but not without a healthy dose of skepticism.
The main questions we've faced attempt to locate the bill within a traditional reform process: Who will sponsor it? When will it pass? What are its chances?
As I wrote when we started encountering these hesitations,
As it stands now, though, we're happy to not have all the answers about where the bill is going. Just like legislation itself, we're not pretending to know the best strategy for the bill, and we recognize that best ideas will be the ones that can benefit from a large community of experts and stakeholders.
Now that we've gotten some real feedback about the bill's provisions, we can make some decisions about how to advocate for the package's implementation. (more)
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