My colleague Paul Blumenthal describes what’s happening in more detail, but the basic gist of the situation is thus: the House will debate H.R. 2998 as a substitute amendment to the original bill, H.R. 2454. Complicating matters is the sheer length of the bill — H.R. 2454 weighed in at 1091 pages. The substitute bill that was dropped this week is 1200 pages long! And, as if to add insult to injury, there are 300 pages of material included today based upon committee action yesterday.

I wrote last week that OpenCongress can be an incredible resource for citizens, reporters and activists looking for information on Congress, but cautioned that this is only true when Congress makes that information available. With the case of the American Clean Energy And Security Act, this simply wasn’t possible. Members of the House were given precious little time to determine the policy outcomes of this legislation, due to its size, the different versions released, and the time frame provided for action (Speaker Nancy Pelosi had sought a vote before next week’s 4th of July recess). Members of the public were given even less time.

My colleagues at the Sunlight Foundation argue that lawmakers should be required to post legislation online for 72 hours before voting. That would ensure everybody — from Senators and Representatives to bloggers, reporters and citizens — would have time to read the bill.

Cross-posted at OpenCongress.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Yes, I’m an e-mail attachment idiot. The embarrassment doesn’t stop there, however. Kerry sent the above around to my coworkers, and in an attempt to explain myself I replied to everybody saying I was using Gmail’s “Forgotten Attachment Detector,” (yes, I forget attachments often).

Except I didn’t hit “Reply All,” I just hit “Reply.” So, Kerry made a wisecrack, and I had to admit to him that I was trying to send the message to everybody:

I’m going to step away from the computer now, before I hurt myself.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Well, popping over to Sen. Bingaman’s official site this afternoon, the first thing you see is a policy statement on, wait for it, health-care reform. Specifically, a public option:

Much attention has been given to whether the bill we send to the president should have a “public option.” I strongly support a public option.  The most critical elements of such a plan are that it would be established and overseen by the federal government, and made available to all Americans. The primary purpose of the public plan is to ensure that there is at least one option for Americans that is affordable and would provide meaningful care. By leveraging competition, a public plan would also safeguard against unscrupulous insurances practices.

Of course, the devil’s in the details, but if you like the idea of a public option you should head over to WeWantThePublicOption.com to register your support. And if you can find Sen. Tom Udall talking about a public option, let me know in comments.

There’s a serious disconnect in the movie between the image of power that those GM brands are meant to convey and the bankrupt car industry they now signify. That disconnect only deepens with the introduction of two new Autobot characters, the illiterate, bickering twins Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), both of which take the shape of Chevrolet concept cars. The characters have been given conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas. For what it’s worth, the script, by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, also includes a crack about Simmons, who’s coded as Jewish, and his “pubic-fro head.”

When you movie characters are being compared to Jar Jar, you’re doing it wrong.

10:45 p.m. UPDATE: It appears I spoke too soon:

Megatron is pulled from the sea to assist the original Decepticon, Fallen (a metaphor for Lucifer? No: For [Director Michael] Bay’s limp junk).

Pajiba FTW!

Life is good.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

But there’s more to the story than the affair. Several reports surfaced today regarding the salary Ensign paid Douglas Hampton (the staffer whose wife was involved in the affair). Our colleague Paul Blumenthal delved deeper into the money angle at the Sunlight Foundation blog, highlighting some of the problems with Senate salary disclosures. He also spent some time updating the OpenCongress Wiki profile of Ensign about the scandal.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on the situation, but if you see something that we’ve missed you can always add the information yourself through the OpenCongress Wiki.

Regular OpenCongress users know that we lag a bit (about 24 hours) behind THOMAS, the official site of the Library of Congress, when we put bill information and roll call votes on OpenCongress. This is a result of several factors, but put simply, we have to wait for the information to be online before our servers can collect it for publication. For the vast majority of users, this system works: Congress usually moves so slowly that waiting 24 hours to read the bill text or review a roll-call vote is not much of a problem.

We do run into trouble, however, when legislation being debated in Congress is not made available online.

On Friday, my colleague John Wonderlich and I made a field trip to Capitol Hill. Our destination: the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. Our goal: pick up a copy of the FY 2010 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill (and an accompanying committee report), which had been marked up that morning.

The U.S. Federal Budget is comprised of 13 major pieces of legislation. The first is a resolution approved by the House and Senate, which serves as a blueprint for Congress as it debates the budget. The remaining twelve appropriations bills fund a specific department or group of departments (for more on the budget process, check out this introduction by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

The Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill is the one that funds Congress: it provides money for lawmakers’ salaries and those of their staff; funding for the Government Printing Office, Library of Congress, and Congressional Budget Office; and funds to operate the U.S. Capitol and maintain the Capitol Grounds. This year, according to a release issued by Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the subcommittee is recommending $3.68 billion in the bill, “an increase of $237 million over the level provided for 2009.”

Moving forward, we can expect greater transparency from Congress in regard to its expenditures. Wonderlich highlighted this a couple of weeks ago on the Sunlight Foundation Blog, discussing new requirements in the House to file online disclosures of expense reports. In addition, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill will likely be available on THOMAS this afternoon (and OpenCongress tomorrow). That said, if you knew what you were doing and you lived in Washington D.C., you could get a copy three days before anybody else.

Finally, since I went through all the trouble of going to pick it up, I thought I would share some highlights from the committee report that I found interesting:

• A slight call out of the Congressional Budget Office: “The CBO plays a critical role in support of Congress through its production of cost estimates. The timely production of these estimates and scorekeeping reports is essential if Congress is to move forward on its legislative agenda. The Committee notes that it has increased CBO’s FTE level by 10 percent since FY 2007. It expects CBO to use these additional funds to continue to improve the speed at which it produces cost estimates for Congress.”
• Is the House running out of room? “There are currently significant limitations on the amount of space available for Members, committees and staff to do their work. Given the size of this project, it is an appropriate time to consider the steps that might be taken to address the House of Representatives’ long-term space needs.”
• Finally, a disconnect between lawmakers and the Congressional Research Service: “Its staff provides high quality research to Members and Committees and functions in many cases essentially as extensions of the legislative staff of the House and Senate. Notwithstanding this record of accomplishment, the Committee is concerned that the CRS, partially because of the increased use of electronic communications and the adoption of new staff structures, may have become less connected to Committees and Member Offices it serves.”

Cross posted at OpenCongress.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I now work for the Sunlight Foundation and OpenCongress, two organizations that are dedicated to open government, transparency, and citizen engagement. We’re using the power of the Internet to empower citizens in the political process and help them hold lawmakers and other officials accountable.

I’ll be in Silver City next week (June 1 – 5) and while there I would like to try to share some of the techniques I’ve learned for keeping tabs on government. Now, I’m not doing this as an “official” Sunlight event, but it will be geared around what Sunlight calls “Insanely Useful Web Sites,” some discussion of good-government principles, and time for questions.

I know this is short notice, but if anybody is interested in learning about some of the new ways of digging up useful information (from voting records of senators to campaign finance records to information on copper smelters around the world) I’m willing to get together. Thursday evening (June 4) looks pretty empty on the ole community calender, so let me know if you’re interested?

If so, please email me at andurin@gmail.com. If enough people are interested we will set a time and place.

Click through to find out more about the image.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

These are exciting times for us– the walls between Government and Developers are starting to shrink, and we here in Sunlight Labs are terribly excited to get to work on doing great things with the data that’s coming out. Government has made a move in the right direction– now it is time for us to show them what we can do.

We’re happy launch Apps for America 2, this time with support from our friends. Google’s put in some prize money as has Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list. O’Reilly and Techweb have provided another wonderful incentive: tickets and table space to Gov2.0 summit for the winners.

So, if you want a shot at $10,000 for first prize (or $2,500 for best visualization), you better get coding!