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.

Among the dozens of bills whizzing through the House this week under the streamlined "suspension of the rules" process is the Energy Markets Emergency Act. This process is reserved for so-called non-controversial bills. The streamlined process allows no amendments and requires the bill get a 2/3 majority in order to pass.

On the website of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the bill is listed with no bill number on the Thursday, June 26, 2008 floor notice:

ReadtheBill.org today wrote to Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) to thank him for speaking out on the problem of Congress not having time to read bills, and to urge him to cosponsor the best solution -- H.Res. 504. Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, also blogged about the letter. Following is an excerpt:

Blogger Glenn Greenwald focused June 20, 2008 on how little time House members had to read the FISA bill.

UPDATE IV: With less than 24 hours to read -- let alone understand -- what they were voting on, the Democratic-controlled House just passed the "compromise" FISA/telecom amnesty bill by a vote of 293-129. I'll post the link to the roll call when it is available. As always, Republicans supported the bill virtually in lockstep, while Democrats split (105-128). Barack Obama managed not to express a view one way or the other prior to the vote (and still hasn't). Nancy Pelosi spoke in favor of the bill, so the whole top layer of House Democratic leadership supported the bill.

ReadtheBill.org believes that House Democrats are slipping into some of the same bad habits for which they justifiably criticized the 1995-2006 House Republican majority.

On June 19, 2008 Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) engaged in a twitter dialogue with Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller. Kudos to Ellen for asking Rep. Culberson to cosponsor H.Res. 504. Sponsored by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), it would require bills and conference reports to be posted online for 72 hours before House floor debate began.

Here is an excerpt (latest tweets at the top):

EllnMllr @johnculberson Support Rep Baird’s H. Res 504. http://tinyurl.com/583dkr There are 13 bipartisan co-sponsors. about 3 hours ago from web in reply to johnculberson

johnculberson @EllnMllr I am also going to ask my Repub colleagues to support 72 hr rule about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

Johnculberson @EllnMllr Right now is a perfect example of how desperately America needs you and others through the Internet to shine sunlight on Congress about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr Please eblast your members your followers and let them know their Congressmen are being asked to approve $185 Bill in War spending about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr in a floor vote before 6pm on a 184 pg $185 b bill that was written at 2:37pm and filed publicly about the same time - outrage! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

ReadtheBill.org has followed up with Rep. Culberson's staff about H.Res. 504. No word yet if his office is interested. If you are a constituent, please contact him. H.Res. 504 is the best solution proposed to the problem he highlights.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) re-introduced his Sunlight Act on January 4, 2007. The bill contains some tough provisions on a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, it would only require bills to be posted online for 48 hours, which would weaken existing House rules, which require availability for three calendar days.

As of December 19, 2007, H.R. 170 has no cosponsors.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) gave the following statement on the omnibus bill December 18:

As we approach the end of the year, Congress once again finds itself on a last minute spending spree, approving billions of dollars of new spending with few questions asked, no amendments allowed, and little debate, discussion, or inspection permitted.