Yesterday, a couple of resolutions were introduced in the House that I think are noteworthy. Many resolutions have no substance—recognizing “National Brush Your Teeth Day” and such—so we don’t even display them. But the ones that do something we display.
And we are displaying H. Res. 385. It would require congressional committees to publish bills within 24 hours after they have amended them.
Often today, a committee will amend and pass a bill, preparing it for the House floor, but it won’t give the public a look at the changes it made to the bill. Uncool.
Committee practice today is to post no bills. That should end. Kudos to all the members of Congress who cosponsored this resolution. Next, let’s talk about standard formats for posting those bills…
Because the great downfall of congressional earmark reform so far has been the fact that members of Congress and senators posted their earmark requests in all kinds of different formats, with no standard organization at all.
Our incredible earmarks project has compiled earmark requests, if imperfectly, in one searchable database, but this is no substitute for Congress getting it right from the beginning.
But I don’t think calling a committee together to talk about it is needed. That’s why I’m unimpressed with H. Con. Res. 201, which would establish a “select committee on earmark reform.” I suspect such a committee would absorb a lot of energy and produce very little.
Congress, why don’t you publish earmarks in standardized formats from the beginning? We’ll do the rest, the American people.
H. Con. Res. 201 gets a shrug of the shoulders and a “meh” from me.
But what matters is what you think. Here are the current votes on H. Res. 385, requiring congressional committees to publish bills within 24 hours after they have amended them, and H. Con. Res. 201, creating a select committee on earmark reform.