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 [...]
A deep fissure between federal lawmaking practices and the Internet-fueled expectations of the people is just starting to open.
Here’s a fascinating interview with Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), in which he justifies not reading the legislation that he votes on.
He’s right that the bills Congress passes are almost incomprehensible, but he draws the wrong [...]
Our earmark data-collection project has been a smashing success, and our intrepid earmark hunters have put over 34,000 earmark requests into the database.
Less than 60 members of Congress and senators remain, but the going is getting tough. Why? Because some disclosures were in the worst possible format: scanned PDFs. It’s a huge chore to make [...]
Update: Rep. Jordan’s office did not reply, but one of our earmark hunters found Rep. Jordan’s earmarks, which had been moved. View them on our site here.
Update II: After the update above Rep. Jordan’s office emailed me with the link.
This morning, I submitted the following note to Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) through his House Web [...]
We continue to make tremendous strides with our earmark hunting effort. Transparency heroes from across the country have now put an astounding 25,000 earmarks in the database.
On our earmarks homepage, you can review earmark requests by state and by member of Congress or senator.
Using our earmarks entry form, you can put the earmark [...]
We’ve done it! WashingtonWatch.com users have brought permanent change to earmarking practices in Washington, D.C.!
Federal Computer Week reports that beginning next year the White House’s Office of Management and Budget will begin collecting and reporting earmark requests, as we have been doing on this site.
With our example, we’ve shown that earmark requests should be on [...]
UPDATE: Prior to submitting this note, I tested Senator Murkowski’s appropriations links in both Internet Explorere and Firefox. However, other visitors to Murkowski’s find the links live, and I am able to access them on a different computer than I usually use.
Accordingly, Senator Murkowski should not be treated as an earmarks scofflaw! She, like [...]
Our earmarks contest continues to make great strides!
We’ve collected more than 10,000 earmarks, input by transparency heroes across the country who want to get a handle on how members of Congress and senators direct spending to special projects in their districts and states.
Many people have entered the earmarks of their local representatives and wrapped it [...]
Update: See the most current “wanted” list here.
We’re up over 10,000 earmarks in the database now, and the downfall of our national map is a good sign that we’re making real headway on bringing transparency to the earmarking process. But we have more to go!
Take a look at the state-by-state list of members of [...]
We’re up over 8,000 earmarks in the database, and they continue to flow in!
But Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) posted his earmarks in a particularly difficult way. After the first two (Commerce, etc. and Transportation/HUD), they are zipped PDF scans of printed documents. That means they can’t be cut and pasted and they haven’t been [...]