Here’s Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation on the closed process being used to ram through the deficit-spending/economic stimulus bill:

[I]t is not just Republicans who are being denied access to the bill. Reporters, bloggers, and the general public are being denied an opportunity to review one of the most important pieces of legislation sent through Congress in a long time. Anyone who wants should express that, whatever the partisan reasons for denying access to the bill, the American people deserve a right to review this legislation. Slamming it through without letting anyone see, save for 7 or 8 congressmen and some staff, is not fair to the public or the legislative process.

This is a dangerous practice that the Democrats ran against in 2006 and now, in the majority, are unfortunately using to block their opposition’s attacks. The majority Democrats should maintain their previous position on running the most open and honest government by allowing the public to review this legislation. Anything less is unacceptable.

Want to roll up your sleeves and pick through the different versions of the economic stimulus bill? The Wall Street Journal has what you need.

Their online feature, “The Stimulus Plans: How They Differ,” has broken out all the spending in the House and Senate bills and noted the differences between the two. Amounts are listed in thousands on their chart, so $253,000 on the chart equals $253 million. (That’s a quarter billion dollars.)

We’re big on per-family and per-person spending numbers around here, so here’s what to do for a rough conversion of the WSJ numbers: For the per-family amount, move the decimal point to the left five places. $253,000 on the chart is about $2.53 for each of the roughly 100 million families in the country.

To get per-person amounts, divide the per-family number by three. (There’s more than 300 million people in the country, but whatever.) That’s about 84 cents per person in the United States that the House of Representatives wants to spend on “Repairs and security improvements at Department of Agriculture and agencies.” Go through the whole thing this way and you’ll feel nickel-and-dimed to death.

These numbers are probably not net present value figures like we discussed in our most recent post on the cost of the Senate bill. Reporting the net present value would bring the number down a little bit. Not all spending will happen this year and future spending is less expensive than spending today. (I’ll correct the record if I learn otherwise from the WSJ folks.)

Kudos to the WSJ for putting this together – not an easy task. If everyone slices and dices bills like this different ways, we might wake up one day and find ourselves back in charge of our government!

Republicans in the House and Senate are calling for the conference committee on the economic stimulus bill to be televised. It’s a fascinating idea.

A conference committee is a meeting among representatives of both the House and the Senate to work out differences between the two bodies on similar legislation. Both the House and Senate have now passed different versions of H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and they need to figure out what the final bill will look like.

I have been to conference committee meetings before as a staffer. Senators, Representatives, and their top staff members huddle in a smallish room and go through the bill hashing out the final product.

Contrary to popular belief, the ones I’ve attended were not in smoke-filled rooms. But they are closed, “insider” affairs. What goes in and what comes out are largely pre-determined by back-channel discussions before the actual meetings.

If conference committee meetings were televised, members of the conference committee would be constrained to explain what they were doing and why. That would be a good thing.

There is some risk in how these ideas are being put forward. Republicans threaten the goals of the transparency community (in which we count WashingtonWatch.com) if they use transparency as a partisan cudgel against Democrats and President Obama.

Republicans should pair their push for openness while Democrats are in control with a pledge to openness of their own. Any openness precedents set now should hold in any Congress, regardless of partisan control.

I’ve got my TiVo ready. Let’s get on with the show!

President Obama went before the cameras tonight for his first press conference, aimed at selling the economic stimulus bill being debated in Congress as H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Anyone watch? Let’s hear your assessment in the comments. Here’s a transcript. (I was at the gym.)

A cloture vote on a compromise bill hammered out in the Senate was approved today, meaning that the version of the bill in the Senate is likely to see a final vote (and approval) soon – likely tomorrow (Tuesday). It has to be reconciled with the House bill yet.

What’s really exciting, though, is that the Congressional Budget Office came out with a cost estimate for the latest Senate bill today!

Our number crunching comes up with the following results: The bill costs the average U.S. family about $2,200, and it raises the national debt by about $8,200 per family.

Let’s go through that.

The bill spends about $5,200 per family, or $1,650 per person.
It reduces taxes by about $3,000 per family, or $950 per person.
Total cost (using our methodology): $2,200 per family, or $700 per person.
Added to national debt: $8,200 per family, or $2,600 per person

These are net present value figures. That means the value today of the spending and tax reductions in the future. In terms of spending, for example, it’s the amount you would have to put in the bank today to fund spending over the next ten years (which is as far as the cost estimate goes). And for tax reductions, it’s the value today of tax savings that will accrue over the next ten years.

So now you have an idea of the kind of money we’re talking about with the big economic stimulus. You’re a little bit better positioned to decide what you think of it.

Be sure to let your Senators and member of Congress know your opinion.

I posted here back in November suggesting that we should get to read the stimulus bill.

With things moving quickly on a very different bill now, I’m delighted to report that readthestimulus.org has published an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama asking them to make public the language of a compromise currently pending in the Senate.

It should be put online for five days before a vote, they say. WashingtonWatch.com is a signatory to the letter.

Majority Leader Reid, we ask that you publish the full legislative text of the compromise immediately, and furthermore, to delay any vote on the bill for at least five days following publication. The American public deserves time to read and understand the substance of this critical legislation, and to express their views to their Senators.

Read the whole thing. Email this around. Now.

Update: The text of the Senate compromise – which apparently will be voted on as an amendment Monday (Feb. 9) at about 5:30 p.m. – is now available. All 778 pages of it.

Well, the results of the stimulus contest showed up a few places, anyway . . .

U.S. News’ “Risky Business” blogger Matt Bandyk picked up one of the winning entries in the economic stimulus contest and used it for a post on “Green Jobs.” Check it out.

And Ryan Grim linked to it at Huffington Post.

A little over two weeks ago, we announced our exciting economic stimulus contest, inviting you, the readers of the WashigntonWatch.com blog, to call out the best and worst in the stimulus bill. We had many, many entries, and they highlighted lots of good and bad in the bill.

The goal was to identify spending in the economic stimulus bill that will do a really good job of stimulating the economy, or a really bad job, with a $100 prize going to the best comment identifying good stimulus spending and another $100 to the best comment identifying bad stimulus spending.

Well, with the stimulus bill being debated on the Senate floor, we have decided to close out the contest and do the judging. Special guest judge Adam Hughes from OMB Watch and I have looked over each entry, tabulated the results, hung the hanging chads, and triple-checked our work.

And the winners are:

In the “what’s good about the stimulus bill” category -

WashingtonWatch.com visitor Graham Dufault says:

As economist Gary Becker points out, many of the well-intended infrastructure investments mandated in the stimulus bill are probably going to end in wasteful spending. I am hardly ever an advocate of increased government intervention. However, I want to argue in favor of a subsection in Title IX appropriating increased funds for green job training. The Apollo Alliance reports that approximately three million jobs will be created over the next decade in the green energy industry. Most of these jobs would be middle-skill work (think electrician-cum wind turbine technician). Additionally, the Workforce Alliance cites a current gap between supply and demand of middle-skill labor that will widen by 10 to 15 percent by 2014 in favor of demand. Here is an opportunity for the government to make a productive investment in a sector that has a diminished argument for private sector investment, especially in the absence of high gas prices.

Graham was a Legislative Correspondent with Senator Gordon Smith’s (R-OR) office until last month. Senator Smith lost his re-election bid in November 2008. Graham wrote letters, floor statements, and legislation, and helped advise Senator Smith on a variety of domestic policy issues. He graduated from Emory University with a BA in economics in 2005, and is currently looking for full-time work.

Employers, jump on this opportunity – with victory in the WashingtonWatch.com economic stimulus contest on his resume, he’s going to go quickly!

And in the “what’s bad about the stimulus” category:

Kristina Rasmussen of the National Taxpayers Union writes:

Out of the $550 billion “stimulus” spending plan, $30 billion is dedicated to highway infrastructure while $10 billion is marked for transit/rail.

If we look at which transportation mode people actually use, it is clear that Congress is heavily favoring the proportionately small number of rail/transit users.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2006 folks logged 4.7 trillion passenger miles on highways. In comparison, we logged just 32.3 billion passenger miles on rail.

32.3 billion is less than 1 percent of 4.7 trillion. Yet the funding ratio is 75 percent roads and 25 percent rail – a major mismatch with reality. Sorry, drivers.

Something else to keep in mind: According to the National Transit Database, the average transit system covers only 40 percent of its costs from fares. In the rush to build new transit, we’d better prepare ourselves to cover the cost of future operating subsidies. Brilliant.

Congratulations to our winners, who presented, balanced informative arguments, and made complex subjects easier to understand. Each one wins a personal economic stimulus of $100!

We appreciated all the entries, of course, and decided to announce one more “honorable mention” – with a prize of . . . nuthin’ but fame!

WashingtonWatch.com visitor “Jody,” who is evidently one of the PolySciFi bloggers, writes:

It’s an absolute travesty that there is no funding for stimulus contests in the stimulus bill.

Think of all the creativity (and jobbbsss!!! and contest infrastructure!!!) that could be spawned if a mere $1 billion was allocated to writing short essays on the stimulus. With 50% allocated to contest administration, 40% to prizes, and 10% to the man who caught this horrible oversight, I’m certain this piece of the stimulus would’ve been spent far more effectively than anything else in the bill.

Of course, this is overshadowed by the even greater oversight that there is no line item in the bill directing funds to me to disperse through the Human Fund.

You had us at “funding for stimulus contests,” Jody. Congratulations for a job well done!

We have enjoyed running this contest, and may well do more of them in the future. (We’re hoping for a stimulus contest funding amendment in the Senate!) So keep watching this blog. Thanks to all who entered, and congratulations to our winners!

The Government Accountability Office has a report out on the financial services bailout law and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or “TARP.”

As of January 23, the Treasury Department has disbursed about $293.7 billion, mostly to purchase preferred shares of 317 financial institutions. That’s a bit over $3,000 per U.S. family, just shy of $1,000 per person.

As we noted here before, the TARP program was supposed to be about buying troubled mortgage assets, but ended up as investments in financial institutions.

The GAO’s focus is on oversight and transparency, and it says – check out this government-speak:

Treasury has continued to develop a system for detecting noncompliance with key requirements of the program but has not yet finalized its plans. Further, Treasury has made limited progress in formatting articulating and communicating an overall strategy for TARP, continuing to respond to institution- and industry-specific needs by, for example, making further capital purchases and offering loans to the automobile industry. In addition, it has not yet developed a strategic approach to explain how its various programs work together to fulfill TARP’s purposes or how it will use the remaining TARP funds. While GAO does not question the need for swift responses in the current economic environment, the lack of a clearly articulated vision has complicated Treasury’s ability to effectively communicate to Congress, the financial markets, and the public on the benefits of TARP and has limited its ability to identify personnel needs.

Rough translation: “These guys are building a plane in flight. Maybe they crash. Maybe they don’t.”

But here’s a timeline of what’s gone on so far in the bailout. Put on your spectacles:

The economic stimulus bill is slated for debate in the House today, and if the Washington Post could just trim its Sunday editorial on the bill down to 150 words, it would be a contender in our big economic stimulus contest. Here are some kickers:

Helping hire, equip and pay police, a $4 billion item under the bill, might be a good idea, but writing checks to individual households for the same amount would do more to stimulate the economy. Ditto for $16 billion in Pell Grants for college students, $2.1 billion for Head Start and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. All of those ideas may have merit, but why do they belong in an emergency measure aimed to kick-start the economy? For sheer irrationality, it would be hard to top the $4.19 billion the bill would give to the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, on top of $4 billion authorized last year. This program gives local governments money to buy and rehabilitate homes that have been foreclosed on — thus giving lenders an incentive to foreclose on more houses.

The contest calls for you to pick out what’s good in the stimulus bill too. $100 each goes to the two commenters who pick out the best in the stimulus bill, and the worst. Join in the fun right now!

A bill to delay the transition to digital television will be on the House floor today.  It was introduced and passed in the Senate yesterday.

(Update: The vote to pass S. 328 failed. It was a suspension vote, requiring a 2/3 majority rather than just greater than 1/2. – Weds. 1/28 1:00 pm)

The big economic stimulus bill has been assigned the number H.R. 1. It’s called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.