H.R. 3548 – Web page overload!
Posted by Jim Harper
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 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Cost Estimate for H.R. 3548
Posted by Jim Harper
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 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
The WashingtonWatch.com Blog, Year 2
Posted by Jim Harper
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 [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Wanna Know Vote Counts?
Posted by Jim Harper
I’ve been traveling all this week and haven’t kept up with the regular blogging I try to do here. Sorry to those of you who live for the gems that show up on this blog. (Anyone? Anyone?)
Congress is out this week, so it’s a good time to not pay attention to them and spend time [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Someone’s Done Their Friday Good Deed
Posted by Jim Harper
A WashingtonWatch.com user wrote in just now simply to say:
Thank you for the great job you do keeping us informed of all the issues going on in DC.
We don’t get a lot of thanks, so any word of praise is mightily appreciated. The one other good deed you can do is tell your friends and [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Tracking Your Issues on WashingtonWatch.com
Posted by Jim Harper
Here at WashingtonWatch.com, we work to simplify the complex process of lawmaking, but it’s still pretty complex. And following the issues that matter to you is hard to do. So here’s a quick primer on how to do that using this site.
Many bills have a list of subjects in the “Learn More” box. Here’s [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Capitalizing on the Success of This Site?
Posted by Jim Harper
House Republicans are obviously trying to capitalize on the huge, unparalleled success of WashingtonWatch.com with its new “Washington Watch” feature.
Well, not so obviously. Watching Washington is something that a lot of people do, and there are a lot of newsletters and publications that have that phrase in them. But the original, the genuine article, the [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
WashingtonWatch.com Cited in Congressional Testimony
Posted by Jim Harper
This morning the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform had a hearing entitled “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: The Role of State and Local Governments.”
We’re just delighted to see that one of the witnesses, David Robinson, Associate Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, has cited WashingtonWatch.com [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Federal Prison Work Incentive Act – Hail Fellow Well Met!
Posted by Jim Harper
An enthusiastic welcome to everyone visiting H.R. 1475, the Federal Prison Work Incentive Act of 2009 this week.
By your numbers, you have toppled the equine cruelty issue from the top of the “active bills” list. Bills float to the top of this list based on the number of visits, and the horse people have kept [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
CBO AWOL NO MO’
Posted by Jim Harper
Until today, it had been over a week since the Congressional Budget Office published a new cost estimate. This is the source of most of the cost estimates here. Y’know, the cost estimates you have grown to know and love. We take their estimates and plug it into our database, which calculates the per-family, net [...]
Read the rest of this entry »