Full details and more photos below.
So, the big news around the Washington D.C./Baltimore area is the Blizzard of 2010. The commotion got off to a start on Thursday morning when the National Weather Service predicted 7-14 inches of snow between Friday morning ans Saturday night. As Thursday progressed, that estimate went to 10-20 inches, then 16-24, and then to 18-24 inches. By this stage, there was a general sense or purpose that had set in.

That night in D.C., the grocery stores were slammed by residents looking to ride out the storm. Meredith and I had our own troubles here in Baltimore that evening as we tried to stock up on food and essentials.

The snow started in earnest yesterday afternoon (see left), and really started to pick up overnight. The NWS also upgraded the area from a Winter Storm Warning to a Blizzard Warning, due to the high winds and the volume of slow, and said some areas could expect more than 30 inches of snow. I noticed my neighbor’s tree had lost a limb to the snow at about 2 a.m., and went outside to shake the branches on my trees just in case.

This morning, I measured 21 inches of snow in the street, but that was 6 hours ago and it’s been snowing the whole time. I shoveled the walk enough that we can make our way outside if we need to, and I filled up the bird feeders as well. The area behind the house was indicative of the the area.

The TV (wow, watching local news adopt to a 24-hour news cycle for one story is an amazing look at what’s wrong with the whole concept) is reporting the storm is beginning to pass and we should see sunlight around 5:30. At this stage, I don’t know that it will matter—nobody is going anywhere any time soon. Cars are buried, the streets are indistinguishable from the sidewalks, and you’d have to be crazy to attempt driving in these conditions.

However, I finally installed Photoshop this evening and here’s the result. We have quite the wildlife habitat going on in the backyard, with dozens of birds and a few squirrels hanging out. Yesterday, I made sure to get the food out so everybody would be able to stay warm during the snow storm. It was the first time I’ve seen this woodpecker in the backyard, and I hope he’ll continue to hang out in the future.

There are six budget bills remaining this year: (Commerce, Defense, Financial Services, Labor/HHS/Education, Military Construction/Veterans Affairs, State/Foreign Operations, Transportation/HUD). While many predicted they would all be combined into one omnibus bill, it looks like Congress will consider the Defense spending bill separately. The other five bills were combined in a “minibus” package, filed as a conference report, and posted online yesterday.

As regular readers know, we’re big advocates of transparency and openness at the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress. We’ve been advocating for a 72-hour rule for a long time, and I was planning to use this post to show that the bill was not going to be available online for 72 hours before a vote. Before I could do that, it was approved in the House (by a vote of 221-202, full roll call coming soon). We don’t even have a page on the bill here on OpenCongress yet.

That the bill wasn’t online for 72 hours is, in itself, not the biggest consideration: it is a 1,000+ page piece of legislation that contains more than a trillion dollars in spending for five of the largest federal agencies in the country, plus Medicare and Medicaid. Each one of the appropriations bills that was combined have constituencies: members of the public, organizations, groups, companies, foreign policy, all are impacted by these individual bills. Each individual bill should have been debated out in the open, where stakeholders could participate in the process and members could vote on the separate pieces.

Instead, the incentives for supporting (or opposing) such a large piece of legislation change, often drastically.

The situation with the Defense spending bill will be similar—and likely much more difficult. In addition to the normal Defense budget, expect funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (including money for the troop increase recently announced by President Obama), an extension of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program and COBRA subsidies (which I blogged about earlier this week), and according to some reports, legislation to raise the debt ceiling (which Donny touched on today). On top of all that, there’s literally no telling what else might get added at the last minute.

We’ll do our best to keep you apprised of the situation, but OpenCongress can only do so much: we need Congress to step up and do a better job of making information available to citizens.

Those stimulus benefits (also called Emergency Unemployment Compensation) have been the source of intense political wrangling during the past 18 months: House Democrats initially sought to include them in legislation in 2008, but President Bush threatened to veto any bill that contained a benefits provision. In November, Bush relented, and signed H.R. 6867. The program was then expanded in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus bill) that was passed in February. More recently, Congress approved an expansion of EUC of between 14-20 weeks (depending on the level of unemployment in a particular state), but only after weeks of bickering in the Senate.

The time spent legislating that expansion is now catching up on millions of unemployed Americans, because the EUC program wasn’t extended when it was expanded. Therefore, the EUC plan enacted as part of the stimulus bill will expire on December 31. According to NELP, more than 1 million Americans will see their benefits dropped in January, and more than 3 million by March, if Congress doesn’t pass a bill extending EUC.

In addition to the EUC program, the NELP/CAP study recommended renewing additional ARRA provisions: federal funding for Extended Benefits, an $25-per-week benefit for the unemployed, a subsidy for COBRA, and tax exemptions on unemployment benefits.

Two bills have been introduced to extend the ARRA provisions: H.R. 4183 in the House, and S.2831 in the Senate. OpenCongress.org should have the text online for those bills this evening, so be sure to start tracking them.

First up, Rep. Martin Heinrich. His report can be found in the second PDF, beginning on page 343. Here’s the summary:

Next up is Rep. Harry Teague. His report is located on the third PDF, beginning on page 277:

Finally, here’s Rep. Ben Lujan. His report is in the second PDF, starting on page 337. His summary:

Looks like Rep. Teague spent the most this quarter and YTD, almost cracking the $1 million mark for 2009 spending just more than $900,000 thus far.

Each member has about 5-6 pages of information, where the above info is broken down into details (like reimbursements for taxi rides and contracts for technology services), so check through and see if there’s anything interesting. Also, while these reports are a great asset and step toward transparency, they could be better. Keep an eye on the Sunlight Foundation blog for more and to see how you can help.

Update: To answer the obvious question, I included images because I literally couldn’t copy and paste just the sections I wanted. That’s how poorly structured these were (at least for me).

Update 2: Though Rep. Teague did spend the most among his peers in New Mexico, he didn’t really come close to spending $1 million (though Rep. Heinrich did). Also, Teague has been disclosing his office expenditures online all year long. You can see those reports here (on Teague’s nicely detailed Transparent Government page). After doing some searching on the sites for Reps. Heinrich and Lujan, I couldn’t find a similar page, nor could I locate office disclosures for past quarters.

So, kudos to Rep. Teague for being ahead of the curve.

So, I’ve been incredibly silent in this space lately, but it’s warranted. Work has been incredibly busy (you can see some of my recent photos from a Capitol Hill event here, for example), but I think I’ll be posting more often in the coming weeks. I have some New Mexico posts swirling around in my brain waiting to be written, and it is time for fall photography, which I hope to do more of this year than last.

If you haven’t already, go see Meredith’s new site. She’s showcasing a lot of her recent class projects, book designs, poetry and photography, and the girl is nothing if not a witty blogger.

In the spirit of that community, I thought I would use comments from the H.R. 3548 thread as the core of this blog post. In particular, I’ll single out nancym, who has done a remarkable job of tracking the legislation, contacting lawmakers and committees, and keeping her fellow users informed.

To begin, nancym writes that the legislation is being considered under “suspension of the rules,” which she describes:

What’s important is that all those bills on the list that are brought to the floor are brought up together under “suspension,” the key part of that definition being “to dispose of non- controversial measures expeditiously.” I.e., All these other relatively unimportant bills that the Speaker considers are simply a matter of paperwork and little discussion because most will agree to pass them are brought up in clusters to save time for more important bills.

HR 3548 is squeezed into this batch under suspension because it is the fastest way to get this bill out of the House, AND it would seem that the Speaker’s estimation is that the bill would face little opposition in the House. Furthermore, according to suspension rules, the time for argument is limited, as well is the opportunity for amendments. So this cannot be dragged on for days of debate.

Also the amendments rule indicates that the only way an amendment would be made to this bill that would include more states is if the person bringing the bill to the floor to propose suspension of the rules (”the manager”–not sure if this would be McDermott or some head of committee or someone else) proposes the amendment, OR if the committee has already built an amendment into the version coming out of committee.

We know that the bill is likely to easily pass the House, but just what does it do? The short of it: provides an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits for workers who have been out of a job for extended periods of time, and whose benefits about to expire. But which workers will qualify? Nancym to the rescue, this time with a comment on the legislation itself:

This refers to the [Insured Unemployment Rate] written into the original [Emergency Unemployment Compensation] bill. So any state over 8.5% [Total Unemployment Rate] OR any state over 6% IUR would qualify for an extra 13 weeks. That is why press reports and Rep. McDermott’s own press release list Pennsylvania as included in the list of states this will help immediately.

So, states with very high rates of unemployment will benefit from this bill. She narrows the scope even further:

What they MEANT to say is that 300,000 people will run out of benefits by the end of September. All those people AND anyone exhausting benefits, either now, earlier, or anytime later until the provisions of the bill expire will receive 13 extra weeks if their state qualifies in an extended benefit period.

This bill is basically an extension of Emergency Unemployment Compensation provided in the stimulus bill adopted at the beginning of the year. According to nancym, this extension also pays for itself:

The actual bill is a bit open-ended; I don’t see a cutoff date, though that may be indicated in the original bill for which this is essentially an amendment. The cutoff mentioned in the bill is just that we each get only one shot at the 13 weeks (in this bill at least).

The bill gives that to anyone in a state that gets into that EB period, even though the funds are EUC. But of much interest to legislators is the fact that the bill pays for itself with an ongoing tax on employers that’s existed for 30 years but was about to expire. So the bill is “deficit-neutral.”

Thanks to nancym, we now know the following:

1. The legislation will provide extended unemployment benefits in 26 states (those with TUR of 8.5% or greater, and Pennsylvania, with an IUR greater than 6%.
2. Individuals who have exhausted their unemployment benefits will be eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits.
3. The House will quickly approve the bill today.

She also writes that the next step (after the Senate approves H.R. 3548) for those out of working and requiring an extension would be H.R. 3404, which would extend many of the benefits through 2010:

Right now they are trying to plug a small hole in a giant dyke that might be about to burst. Hopefully they will change this bill by the time it gets to final passage. But even if it doesn’t change, there is pending legislation in HR 3404 and in the Senate that will be needed to extend these entire programs into 2010, for which they need more time to debate because of the billions needed to pass them.

It’s being put through via an emergency process to cover the projected 1.5 million who will be exhausting benefits in the states that have the most dismal rates. I agree it’s not fair at all, and hopefully they will change it. But if they had added more, it can trigger concerns about more spending which could hold up the legislation.

Some states will actually qualify later this year or early January if things keep getting worse, so even though these states are not included now, they are eventually covered by this law if the rate goes to 8.5 (or 6 insured rate).

Now, a lot of this information is available elsewhere on the Internet, but I can’t help but think that nancym and the other incredible users like her are using OpenCongress to spread the word about these types of bills for a reason. We strive to bring all of this information into one place, and give people the tools to organize around an issue and engage with their elected representatives easily. It seems to be working in this particular situation.

If you’re interested in participating in OpenCongress, please sign up or shoot me an e-mail: avelino@opencongress.org.

The federal Transportation Department data, listing the status through Aug. 7 of approved road and bridge projects in all 50 states, show a huge disparity in progress nationwide.

New Mexico is the furthest ahead when it comes to green-lighting projects, having issued a notice to proceed for all its approved projects.

According to Michel, the coming wave of construction is the big take away:

But in most cases, approved projects were still in the pre-construction phase, the Spot Check reporters found. “Construction is supposed to begin the first week of August, but I have yet to see any progress beginning,’’ wrote Coulter Jones, who looked into a $3 million paving project in Luzerne County, Pa.

Reports from the field came in over a two-week period in late July, so it’s possible some have advanced in the meantime. Coulter checked back last week, for instance, and found that work had begun on the Pennsylvania project.

In some cases, construction delays appeared to be the result of contractors’ schedules rather than red tape.

Looks like there’s some construction coming your way (no matter where you live).

For example, there’s an e-mail going around that mentions sections of the bill and refers to the page number where the point is located:

PG 427  Lines 15-24 Govt mandates program for orders for end of life
The Govt has a say in how your life ends

As the above makes clear, it’s still a struggle to easily “compare notes” on legislation. You’d have to find a PDF of the bill, download it, read the section, and then send an e-mail back. Adding to the difficulty is what happens when the bill is marked up in committee or amended on the House floor. Now you’re dealing with another PDF entirely, so the page numbers you were referring to earlier don’t line up anymore.

Fortunately, we’ve made it pretty easy to debate specific sections of legislation here at OpenCongress.

Check out the text of HR 3200, and you’ll notice there are “Comment” and “Permalink” buttons whenever you mouseover a section or clause. Those permalinks let you reference a specific section or clause of the bill. So, say you wanted to blog about the specific section mentioned in the quote above. That’s easy! Here’s a link:

A program for orders for life sustaining treatment for a States described in this clause is a program that[...]

And what if you want to debate the point? Just register for an OpenCongress account, and you can comment on this and every bill in Congress, section-by-section.

We’ll have more on this later, but I encourage you to check out the permalink feature when you’re referring to specific sections of the bill.

(P.S. For the record, OpenCongress doesn’t include page numbers on bills because the Library of Congress doesn’t publish bills that way.)

Cross-posted at OpenCongress.org