House Office release Office Expense Reports

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In a new (and welcomed) form of disclosure, House members have released a huge document dump containing office expenditures for all 435 representatives. Sunlight will be doing a distributed research project of some sort to sift through the data, but I wanted to get out the info on New Mexico’s congressional delegation. For the following charts, the column on the right is quarterly, while the column on the left if YTD (though which quarter is kinda confusing). Click for larger versions.

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

Martin Heinrich Expense Report 2009

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

Harry Teague Expense Report 2009

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

Ben Ray Lujan Expense Report 2009
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.

Friday Cat Blogging: Sleeping Beauties

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Sleeping Beauties

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.

Unemployment Benefits Extension Explained By OpenCongress Users

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The House today is set to vote on an extension of unemployment benefits. The comment threads on bills related to the issue have long been a valuable resource for people seeking information on unemployment benefits. For example, with huge interest in the House health care reform bill, the legislation generated 1,500 comments. By comparison, the page for H.R. 3548 has more than 2,500 comments. Its predecessor, H.R. 6867, had more than 57,000 comments. The community that has built up around these bills is a “community” in the truest sense of the word: the people know one another, there’s some infighting (and trolling), but generally individuals can find a sympathetic crowd who are knowledgeable about the issue and willing to help.

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. Continue reading…

The Health Care Debate and the Marvel of Permalinks

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Read the Bill with Scrabble tilesRecently, we at OpenCongress have received a lot of requests to see the text of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (HR 3200) with page numbers. There’s no denying this is a complex piece of legislation with far-reaching effects on Americans and the economy, and I think there’s a genuine movement by Americans to understand the bill and debate specific points.

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

Are you a “natural born” citizen?

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Neil Abercrombie by Justin Sloan

While the struggle to pass health-care reform legislation continues as the biggest story in Congress right now, that other “news” story just won’t seem to die:

Dem Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.

The measure Abercrombie will introduce commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. But here’s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace.

There’s been a lot of discussion on OpenCongress of late regarding natural born citizens, and whether President Barack Obama meets the criteria. But a few months ago, another piece of legislation also ruffled some feathers: the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009 (H.R. 1868). Our summary of the legislation says, “This bill would eliminate birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants in the United States. Current U.S. law automatically recognizes any person born on American soil as a natural born citizen.”

This description was challenged by several readers, who argued there are very specific circumstances required for “natural born” classification. Continue reading…