Last night, the Senate passed H.R. 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009. The House is expected to pass the Senate version quickly—perhaps today—and President Obama is likely to sign it.

The bill authorizes up to 14 additional weeks of benefits for unemployed workers nationwide, provided they have already exhausted their earlier authorized benefits or will do so by the end of the year, plus an additional 6 weeks of benefits in states with unemployment higher than 8.5%. A cost estimate for the bill puts it at about $24 per U.S. family.

An article in the Detroit Free Press points out a wrinkle in that extra 6-week benefit for hard-hit states:

However, under the legislation as written, it is unclear how many people in those high unemployment states could ever collect that additional 6 weeks of benefits. To get them, a person in one of the affected states would have to exhaust the newly authorized benefits of up to 14 weeks first, and do so by the end of the year. But there are only eight weeks left in 2009.

I suspect we might be hearing about that more here on WashingtonWatch.com.

But the point of this post is to share a very kind note I received yesterday from a visitor, regarding the 50,000+ comments we received on the bill:

I wanted to take a moment and thank you for the great job hosting the forum on the Unemployment Extension in the Senate.

I have a vested interest in the success of this bill and during the initial stages searched for relevant content relating to the progress and grass roots efforts of regular citizens. I could find no other source that provided up to the minute information from so many different sources. Kudos to you and your team!

I also noticed the presence of many negative posts from the “trolls” and was very surprised by your restraint in regards to their comments. I commend you for allowing different points of view through discussion even if some of the comments were truly mean spirited.

My point is that we must allow for the free disemination of information, both good and bad. I’m personally relieved after such a drawn out process but I truly believe without your constant support of this forum the pressure would have been unbearable in the absence of new information.

Kudos to washingtonwatch.com and their entire company. Keep up the good work, there are many more important decisions in the near future and with your help facts will overcome unknown fears.

It’s very gratifying to get a little “thank you” for the work of hosting the site and moderating the often very rough conversation on this bill. I was barraged with people asking me to ban other visitors for making what were often truly inappropriate comments, but I think a strong commitment to free exchange of information can produce the best results.

Our so-called “trolls” have things they want to say. They lack social skills, and they’re obviously very frustrated. It’s up to this site to give them a productive outlet for engagement. I’ve got some ideas for doing that, and we’ll give those a try—as well as more comment controls—in the coming months and years. Your wishes of “good luck” are welcome.

And good luck to all the folks who are battling unemployment out there. For all the negativity I have dealt with as manager of the site, the goodness of the people trying to learn information, work together, and better themselves shines through.

I hope nobody ever needs another extension of unemployment compensation—because I hope everyone gets jobs! But I also hope many of you will continue to stay engaged with Congress through this site.

It takes active citizenship to run a good government and society. I hope the folks who have gotten engaged with government through this process will continue to pay attention—to all the issues the federal government deals with.

We’ll be here to work with you.

For the last hour-and-a-half or so, the comment function has been out of commission for H.R. 3548.

As I stepped out to a meeting, I noticed that the site was down, so I put my Web/database team on the case. They determined that traffic on H.R. 3548 was too high for our servers to handle and set it so that we could fulfill your requests to view the page without taking down the whole site. To do this, they disabled the comment function.

It’s now back up. I’ll go read all the cards and letters you sent me in the meantime.

I want each and every one of you to know that it wasn’t personal and it didn’t have anything to do with H.R. 3548—I mean, other than your interest in it.

We’re a site that runs on a shoestring budget and when we have too much success, it can result in failure. Carry on! And please accept our apologies for the outage.

In response to the passions that some issues generate (this bill, for example), we’ve produced an ingenious new function in our comment system.

It’s sort of an automated schoolmarm that invites people to tone down their language if they’ve gotten a little too riled up. Visitors who use harsh language will be invited to reconsider before they submit their comments.

A careful, polite comment is always more persuasive than an angry or vulgar comment. Commenters whose frustrations are very real do themselves harm when they use foul language or insult others. That drives away people who might sympathize with them.

Now, of course, some people aren’t interested in persuading others. They merely want to create a stir. These poorly adjusted folks—we call them “trolls”—get pleasure from upsetting people. The best response when they try this is to deny them their reward. Do not respond.

Now WashingtonWatch.com remains a free speech zone where people can express controversial opinions in strong ways. We do not require a log-in to comment, though logging in will allow you to develop a reputation for honesty, fairness and depth of knowledge. And we’re not going to play the role of teacher or parent to users of the site. You’re grown-ups and it’s up to you to manage your conversations.

With our little warning system in place, though, we will be more justified in occasionally editing or deleting comments that degrade the conversations on our comment boards. One technique that I’m looking forward to using is called “disemvoweling.” It’ll be a kick to use, along with other techniques, for discouraging bad behavior.

But don’t get the idea that there’s any guarantee that the comment boards will always be dignified, or that you can always call on WashingtonWatch.com moderation to protect your sensitive eyeballs from reading ugly comments. As strongly as you feel about any issue, there are people who feel just as strongly the other way. Your job is to find common ground, compromise, or to just agree to disagree.

In the short term, our collection of one or two trolls will get very excited about this new system. I anticipate they will be swearing and insulting people every which way, testing the system and our management of it. Our trolls will calm down soon enough, though, and hopefully people of ordinary decency will be persuaded that commenting rudely is not in their interest. The end result we hope for is a slightly better quality of conversation on the site. Your assistance is appreciated.

The bill to extend unemployment benefits another little while has gotten a score from the CBO. That’s the Congressional Budget Office, a small agency that does economic modeling and estimates about the spending and revenue effects of pending bills.

You can see the analysis itself by going to the “Learn More” box on the page for the bill and clicking “Read an Analysis of the Bill.” To see how we process estimates from CBO, take a look at our “about” page.

H.R. 3548 has almost 17,000 comments on it at this writing, and it’s not all sweetness and light. I don’t know if the conversation will improve with the knowledge that every family in the U.S. will spend about $24 to support unemployed folks, but it’s a conversation worth having.

The bills in Congress address many controversial issues, so it’s no wonder that the comments on many bill pages can get pretty tough. Many people lack the social skills to deal with disagreement in a productive way. Instead, they call each other names and use vulgar language here on the site.

We don’t like it, but there’s little we can do about it. There are thousands and thousands of bills in every Congress, and intense discussions going on all the time. It would be prohibitively time-consuming to try moderating all the conversations.

So instead we treat discussions on the site as discussions among adults. It is the responsibility of the participants to manage their own conversations.

If someone is rude to you here on WashingtonWatch.com, treat it as you would rudeness in the real world: by rising above. Ask people to stop. Show empathy for the strong feelings they have even as you disagree with their conclusions. Calmly invite people to reason with you. That’s not always going to work, but it’s all you can do.

It’s a waste of your energy to try convincing one person of something. There are thousands of other visitors to this site every day, and they are your more important audience. When these other people see that you are the more reasonable participant in the debate, they will be inclined to trust you and believe you, and perhaps come to your side. Your most important audience is not the person you’re debating with!

There are some people who won’t respond even to your careful invitations to good behavior. They seem to gratify themselves by offending others. These are the real misfits, and the Internet community calls this kind of person a “troll.”

Wikipedia says that an Internet troll is “someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen that kind of behavior.

And there’s a simple rule for dealing with trolls: Ignore them.

Talking back to them—even talking about them—makes them more energetic and eager to insult and annoy you. Ignore them. Go on with your discussions as though they weren’t there.

The Internet motto for this situation is “Do Not Feed the Trolls,” or “DNFTT.” Take that to heart, and encourage others to avoid feeding the trolls.

Join together with the other normal, well-adjusted participants in your conversations to shun any troll. Set a policy among yourselves of never responding to trolls and never speaking about trolls. Eventually—after even more aggressive attempts to draw attention—they will go away.

WashingtonWatch.com is a free speech zone. We don’t require people to identify themselves before speaking. We don’t try to ban people from speaking. We will sometimes modify a post to eliminate vulgarity and other policy violations, but it’s extremely rare that we will delete a post. And given the ever-increasing traffic on the site, we can’t promise to maintain any policy about monitoring, editing, or deleting comments. It’s up to you, the community, to keep things under control.

In order to encourage good behavior, we do post the names of logged in users in light blue. It shows that the speaker is a stable identity, who will take credit or responsibility for the things they say. (You should register and create yourself a stable handle now!) Others can be ignored if they are not willing to be identified even by a handle they’ve created on our site.

We’re sorry that we can’t moderate all the discussions all the time. Instead it’s up to you and other members of the community to improve the situation when a troll invades your conversation. It’s up to you and other thoughtful debaters to organize joint action (i.e. silence) against rude behavior and trolls.

Take this rule to heart: Do Not Feed the Trolls! DNFTT!

(Read more posts about comments and commenting here.)

Our earmarks database has over 33,000 earmark requests in it, and a small crew of transparency heroes are working diligently to capture them all. The list of “wanted” members and senators is dwindling.

The next step will be tagging the thousands of earmarks that have made it into the appropriations bills now being considered in Congress. You can see those bills in our FY 2010 spending tracker. They designate federal spending for the new fiscal year that begins October 1st.

Here’s an interesting development: Three of the appropriations bills have no earmarks whatsoever, and one has just one!

The bills to fund the Department of State and foreign operations of the government, H.R. 3081 and S. 1434, haven’t got a single earmark. Neither does the House bill to fund the legislative branch, H.R. 2918.

The Senate bill that covers legislative branch spending, though, has one earmark. The bill is S. 1294.

Senator Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska, the chairman of the subcommittee that produced that bill, has instructed that $200,000 should go to the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska for a photo archive project.

Take a look at Senator Nelson’s earmark. It’s not very thoroughly described, but that’s the way it was in his online disclosure.

Now, ask yourself if you think this is a good use of federal money. Is a photo archive at the Durham Museum something you’d like a little bit of your money to go to? Or is that something local people and people with an interest in photography and history should pay for? It’s up to you. It’s your government, after all.

Here’s the current vote on the Durham Museum Photo Archive project. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the earmark.

There will be many more earmarks to assess in the near future. In the meantime, we need to get the remaining earmark requests into the database!

A visitor to WashingtonWatch.com writes in about the tenor of discussion on H.R. 3491, the Thomas G. Schubert Agent Orange Fairness Act:

With all due respect WashingtonWatch.com why is it that people are allowed to leave vicious & mean spirited comments about recipients of a bill. Why do you allow these people to continually leave these comments without blocking them. I agree everyone is entitled to vote & state their position but insults are not necessary. Esp. when the recipients are widows of veterans who have already suffered enough. I would appreciate it if you could actually respond to my concern. I also don\’t understand how people can be allowed to make these comments without even having to identify themselves. It is just wrong.

It’s a genuine problem, but not one we can solve. Here’s my response:

Thanks for your note. I’m sorry about the harsh tone some people adopt on the site, but many bills in Congress are about controversial issues.

There are thousands and thousands of bills in every Congress, and intense discussions ongoing about many of them all the time. It would be prohibitively time-consuming to try moderating all the conversations – especially when so much of our time is consumed with our earmarks project. Instead, we treat discussions on the site as discussions among adults.

It is the responsibility of the participants to manage their own conversations. There are a few highly successful “trolls” on the site – people who gratify themselves by offending others. I recommend ignoring them. Join together with the other normal, well-adjusted participants to shun any troll. Set a policy among yourselves of never responding to trolls and never speaking about trolls. Eventually – after even more aggressive attempts to draw attention – they will go away.

WashingtonWatch.com is a free speech zone. We don’t require people to identify themselves before speaking. In order to encourage good behavior, we post the names of logged in users in light blue. It shows that the speaker is a stable identity, who will take credit or responsibility for the things they say. Others can be ignored if they are not willing to be identified even by a handle they’ve created on our site.

Thanks again. Sorry that we can’t moderate all the discussions all the time. I hope you can join together with others to improve the situation. I will make a note of this issue on this bill to help encourage thoughtful debaters to organize joint action (i.e. silence) against rude behavior and trolls.

We’ve discussed rude comments here on the blog before. More posts about comments and our comment system can be found here. It’s up to you, users, to manage your discussions on bills.

Our big earmarks contest has been a smashing success – thanks to all of the people who have helped enter earmarks into the database – and the media are taking notice!

Last night, I appeared on the Fox Business Network to discuss the project. Take a look!

Again, thanks to you government transparency heroes who are still entering new earmarks! We have a way to go yet before we get them all, but earmarks continue to pour into the database. Keep hunting!

Here’s the data entry form and instructions. And here are the members of Congress and Senators whose earmarks we still need to collect. We update it regularly so let us know as you finish representatives’ earmarks so we can take them off the list.

One note about this clip. Because it only featured one earmark request from a Republican, it could create the impression that earmarking is a Democratic game and that tracking earmarks is about exposing that. Not true. Earmarking is a bipartisan practice, and this project has nothing to do with going after either party. I offered the Fox producers the first three earmarks discussed yesterday – Mollohan, Rangel, and Klobuchar – because they were at the top of the list on our earmarks homepage, which is ranked by activity.

It’s up to you to decide whether these earmarks are good or bad. What we’re working on is letting you actually have a voice!

A WashingtonWatch.com user and subscriber to the email list wrote in and asked the following questions:

Hello — I am a total “newbie” to your site — but I am trying hard to become educated about what goes on in Congress — my question is: every week I receive your updates listing these various bills and their associated cost per family (thank you very much) — are these costs in addition to the “budget”? or have these costs per family already been included in the “budget” — if it is all new spending, how is this possible? Are these people crazy? Where will the money to pay for these things come from?

These are good questions. The workings of Washington, D.C. are pretty obscure to normal people out there in the real world. So, in case it helps others, here is the response I sent:

There are basically two types of bills, authorizations and appropriations.

Authorization bills create programs or allow existing programs to continue. Every year or every few years, Congress reauthorizes programs and agencies that are already in place. These bills say that agencies and programs can do what they do, and how they can do it.

So this week, for example, the Senate is debating the National Defense Authorization Act, which will tell the Department of Defense to keep on defending. We don’t have the amount of spending that bill authorizes yet, but you’ve seen those numbers before.

Appropriations bills cause the actual spending to happen – they say that money can come out of the U.S. Treasury to pay the salaries, buy the pencils, pay the contractors, etc. The Defense Appropriations bill will actually spend the money on defending the country. (The Defense approps bills for FY 2010 haven’t been introduced yet.)

Before the appropriations bills get moving each year, Congress passes a budget. The budget sets the total amount it is supposed to spend in all twelve appropriations bills. The budget isn’t a spending bill – it’s a planning document. We give it an estimate and follow it on the site because budget-setting is an important step in the process.

As we emphasize on the “about” page, you can’t add up these different kinds of bills to get a reliable number indicating what Congress is spending.

You can get a rough sense of what Congress is spending in fiscal year 2010, which starts October 1, on the FY 2010 Spending Tracker page. The authorization bills show how much Congress is proposing to spend over several years by starting or continuing programs.

So there may not be as much spending as it looks like – but, yes! They’re crazy! There aren’t enough tax revenues to pay for all the stuff the government is doing, and it’s going to the national debt.

Happy Fourth of July!

What better way to celebrate the founding of our nation than . . . um, by . . . blogging?

Those were the words that introduced the WashingtonWatch.com blog one year ago yesterday – well, one year and two days ago.

That’s right, this blog debuted exactly one year ago, give or take a day. For reasons I don’t recall, the introductory post saluting our nation’s founding went out on July 3rd in the evening, rather than the actual 4th of July. So, why not, let’s celebrate our one year anniversary on the 5th!

It’s been a fun and interesting year of blogging. We scored some early blogging success by calling out the big bedbug issue. It’s an example of Congress getting into just about everything, and we’ve dedicated a whole set of posts to that kind of thing, which we call Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

Needless to say, there are people that disagree – they believe that Congress should handle this issue. Their comments are important and welcome.

Another fun category is something called “And a pony . . .” In it I’ve pointed out bills that over-promise what Congress can do. Everyone gets a pony!

But those fun categories were overtaken in the past year with lots and lots and lots of writing about the financial services bailout and economic stimulus bills. It’s been a huge year for big, expensive legislation.

We worked hard to get the bailout text up online as quickly as we could. Our bailout scandal post got some of the most traffic the blog has seen. (More posts on bailouts here.)

But the highest traffic has been for our post containing the text of the stimulus bill. It seems that people want to know what goes on in Washington. (More posts on the economic stimulus here.)

And the people – you – how you like to be heard. The comments on the site are in the tens of thousands each year. As we detailed in our 2008 year-end post, there were about 19,000 comments that year. As we’ve pointed out here, there is lots of entertainment in the comments. There’s ugliness too, as we highlighted in a post called “Racism Exists.”

Speaking of numbers, we’ve had about 150,000 visits to just over 450 posts here on the blog. Hopefully, the posts have helped to weave the bills in Congress together with the real world. It’s all a part of making Washington, D.C. a little more accessible to the people whose money it spends.

Speaking of money, there are endless things we would do to improve this site if money grew on trees. It doesn’t. But it does trickle in when more people visit. WashingtonWatch.com is advertising-supported (for the most part). So we need more visitors.

If you like what you find here – if you care enough to have read this whole self-congratulatory blog post – please take a little time to tell your friends about WashingtonWatch.com and how they can use the site to be better citizens – to be a little more like you. Thanks for reading!