The huge and important housing rescue bill will be on the House floor later this week, but Democrats cannot say when or how the text to be considered will be made publicly available online before floor debate.

This bill is arguably the single most important money-related bill that Democrats will move during the 110th Congress. The bill might involve having taxpayers take responsibility for FIVE TRILLION dollars of debt. In terms of ultimate budget impact, HR 3221 may be on the order of magnitude of the costly Medicare prescription drug bill that Republicans jammed through Congress without anyone reading.

At 1 pm today, Monday July 21, 2008, the House Financial Services Committee staff said the committee does not know when or how the text will be made publicly available. They referred me to the offices of the Speaker or Majority Leader. The House Rules Committee said it had no meeting scheduled on the bill, as if they had nothing to do with it. Of course, the Rules Committee often gives last-minute approval to rush bills through the House, and very likely will again for this bill within 48 hours.

Time.com's Jeremy Caplan reports from the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City. He quotes ReadtheBill.org's DeGennaro on the power of collaborative online bill analysis, and notes the organization's efforts to have bills posted online for 72 hours before floor debate.

Time.com "The Citizen Watchdogs of Web 2.0"
by Jeremy Caplan, June 30, 2008

[...]
Perhaps even more significant than analyzing bills after the fact is being able to influence debate beforehand. "The holy grail of this new movement is to develop the technology for collaborative analysis of bills online," says Rafael DeGennaro, a longtime congressional staffer and former president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. An example of the impact of legislative annotation took place as far back as a year ago, when conservative blogger N.Z. Bear posted a PDF version of the 2007 Senate Immigration bill, helping opponents of the bill rally around particularly controversial details that might otherwise have escaped their attention. The text of the bill had been closely guarded prior to the leak the weekend of May 20, 2007. Were it not for the online annotation, the bill might not have been widely analyzed before the debate scheduled for May 21. DeGennaro says the immigration bill's ultimate defeat demonstrated the impact online legislative annotation can have.

DeGennaro now runs ReadtheBill.org, a nonpartisan startup trying to build consensus around the idea that bills should be posted on the Web for 72 hours before Congressional debate begins, so the public can assess and respond to pending legislation.

Urge your Representative to cosponsor H.Res. 504

Is your member a cosponsor?

The top legislative priority for ReadtheBill.org is to get more cosponsors for H.Res. 504. Authored by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), it was introduced June 20, 2007 with a bipartisan group of six cosponsors, and now has more.

H.Res. 504 would establish the 72 hours online rule. This resolution would require posting legislation and conference reports on the Internet for 72 hours before floor consideration.

H.Res. 504 would amend the standing rules of the House to update and strengthen the existing three-day rule in the House and close various loopholes. It would replace the obsolete, unenforceable, routinely-waived three-day rule it with the modern, tough, enforceable 72 hour online rule. Unlike the three-day rule, the 72 hours online rule would apply even in the final week of a congressional session, when the worst abuses occur.

Summary of Provisions (HTML) -- MS Word version
Full text of the resolution and other info (on the Library of Congress THOMAS system)
Standing Rules of the House of Representatives (What H.Res.504 amends -- see rules XIII & XXII only)

Official list of cosponsors (on the Library of Congress THOMAS system)

Arguments for H.Res. 504
Arguments against H.Res. 504 (and ReadtheBill's counterarguments)