Open Congress : Blog

Washington State Dem In Line For Murtha's Chairmanship

2010-02-09T14:54:00Z

The death of Rep. John Murtha [D, PA-12] means not only an open House seat in Pennsylvania, but also an open chairmanship in one of the most significant House subcommittees.

Murtha was the chair of the defense appropriations subcommittee, which oversees Pentagon spending. Rep. Norm Dicks [D, WA-6], the new ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, is expected to be chosen by the House Democratic Caucus to take Murtha’s chairmanship.

A lot of attention has been given to Murtha’s anti-war stance, but he also was known for his ability to secure earmarks, moreso than any other House member, for his district. While not as prolific as Murtha, Dicks is also known for obtaining earmarks for his district. You can view Rep. Dicks’s earmark requests for the current fiscal year here.

And also like Murtha, Dicks has attracted attention for his ethics record. The Seattle Times explains:

Dicks, Murtha and James Moran Jr., a Virginia Democrat also on the panel, were investigated last year by the Office of Congressional Ethics over $137 million in contracts they directed to defense companies that had hired a lobbying firm, PMA Group, founded by a former subcommittee staffer.

The ethics office dropped the probe in December without taking action. The House ethics committee is conducting its own investigation, although the ethics office recommended that review be dropped, too.

Should he get the chairmanship, Dicks will have considerable sway over a controversial $40 billion air-to-air refueling tanker contract that is being sought by Northrop Grumman, European firm EADS and Boeing. Boeing has long been the top donor to Dicks and has a major manufacturing plant in his district.

Incidentally, that contract was a major reason why Sen. Richard Shelby [R, AL] recently placed a blanket hold on all of President Obama’s appointees. If awarded the contract, Northrop Grumman and EADS would build the tankers in Alabama.

Draft of Senate Jobs Bill Now Available

2010-02-09T14:06:00Z

A draft copy of the Senate Democrats jobs bill has been uploaded to Scribdb. Read it for yourself here.

We’ll have more on exactly what’s in it later. Major Garret is tweeting some details:

To clarify, total package spends out at $135 bn; costs $85 bn due to increased taxes via $50 bn in closed “loopholes.”

Bill would also extend Patriot Act for 1-year and provide 7-month Medicare reimbursement “doctor fix.”

Other parts: $15 bn for infrastructure, $35 bn in extended tax breaks, 3-month unemployment insurance/COBRA extension = $35 bn

Dodd to Push for Qausi-Independent CFPA

2010-02-09T12:40:00Z

Last week, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd [D, CT] announced that he had reached an impasse with Republicans on the committee over what should be in the Senate’s financial reform bill. The main sticking point was the proposal for a consumer financial watchdog agency that would be called the “Consumer Financial Protection Agency,” or “CFPA.” Dodd wanted the CFPA to be an independent agency. Republicans wanted it to be rolled in with one of the existing financial regulators.

Commentators wondered whether the bill had essentially died. Without Republican support and with the Democratic supermajority gone, it’s hard to see it getting through the Senate.

The Huffington Post is reporting that Dodd will introduce his Dems-only financial bill this week, and that it will include a sort of quasi-independent CFPA.

Sources say he’ll likely call for an agency that will have:

The authority to write and enforce rules governing mortgages, credit cards and consumer loans;

Its own budget, one not subject to the Congressional appropriations process so it can’t be harmed by lawmakers bent on taking away its power;

A unitary executive nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate;

And the power to police both banks and non-bank financial firms like payday lenders and mortgage finance companies.

The new body will likely be housed within the Treasury Department. While it won’t be a purely independent agency like the Federal Trade Commission or the Consumer Product Safety Commission — two consumer-focused agencies on which it’s modeled — it will still meet “the principles of [an] independent agency,” Heather Booth, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, said in an e-mail.

This sounds like prime chopping block material to me. Kind of like the compromised public option that Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] included in the health care reform bill he brought to the floor, which was ultimately dropped to shore up support among conservative Democrats.

It’s unclear how many Democrats would oppose the CFPA as Dodd is proposing it, but when the House debated financial reform legislation (H.R.4173) in December, a full 33 Democrats voted in favor of stripping out the CFPA.

Shelby Lifts Blanket Hold On Obama Nominees

2010-02-09T12:30:00Z

When we last checked in on Sen. Richard Shelby [R, AL], he had placed a blanket hold on all of President Obama’s pending nominees. This week, the hold ensnaring most of those nominees has been lifted.

Shelby, as you recall, was angry because two earmarks that could mean billions for Alabama were in jeopardy. Yesterday, Shelby’s office released a statement confirming that most of the holds had been lifted:

The purpose of placing numerous holds was to get the White House’s attention on two issues that are critical to our national security – the Air Force’s aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI’s Terrorist Device Analytical Center (TEDAC). With that accomplished, Sen. Shelby has decided to release his holds on all but a few nominees directly related to the Air Force tanker acquisition.

President Obama’s nomination woes are far from over, however, as Sen. Ben Nelson [D, NE] yesterday announced that he would not only oppose but also vote to filibuster Craig Becker, the president’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB monitors union elections and deals with employment disputes. Becker, a former Service Employees International Union lawyer, is seen by many conservatives as being overly supportive of union causes.

Sen. Nelson echoed this concern:

Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the Administration. This is of great concern, considering that the Board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand.

The cloture vote on Becker’s nomination is expected later today in the Senate. With Nelson voting to filibuster, not to mention Sen. Scott Brown [R, MA], Democrats will have a tough time finding the 60 votes needed to advance the nomination.

Finding Republican Ideas In A Democratic Health Care Bill

2010-02-09T10:32:00Z

President Obama is asking Republicans what ideas they have to reform health care, but as Ezra Klein points out, many of their ideas are already in the existing Senate health care bill (H.R.3590).

As Donny mentioned, President Obama plans to hold a health care summit this month with Congressional Republicans. Speaking to CBS News anchor Katie Couric, Obama said, "I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues. What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table.”

Using the GOP’s “Solutions for America” website, Klein pinpoints six ideas espoused by Republicans that Democrats have already adopted. Here’s a closer look at where these ideas are in the Senate health care bill, including links to the exact legislative text so you can read them in the context of the overall bill:

Conservatives argue that regulation of insurers can be too harsh in certain states and that the insurers should be allowed to sell policies across state lines. Klein says this idea lives on in Section 1333 of the bill, which allows for the creation of “Health Care Choice Compacts.” Under these compacts, a group of states could allow one insurer from any of those states to sell policies in all of them.
A second tenet of the GOP’s health care reform plan is to “allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do.” As Klein says, this is exactly what the exchanges in Section 1312 of the bill are supposed to do or as the bill says, insurers have to consider everyone covered by a plan in “a small group market” “to be members of a single risk pool.”
The third GOP idea is to allow states to adopt their own innovations in lowering health care costs. This idea too is in the bill under Section 1332, Klein accidentally points to Section 1302. Under this section, states can apply for a waiver exempting them from the demands of the bill if certain requirements are met.
The fourth and final idea from the GOP website is to simply “end junk lawsuits.” The issue of malpractice is a controversial and highly partisan one and though the bill addresses it, Klein concedes that this might not be enough for conservatives. In Section 6801, states are encouraged “to develop and test alternatives to the existing civil litigation system,” the more promising of which should be evaluated by Congress.
Klein also throws in a couple ideas not mentioned on the GOP’s website, one of which is to cap or repeal the tax break for employer-sponsored insurance. He says the Senate bill accomplishes this through its excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance policies or as they’re defined in Section 9001, “high cost employer-sponsored health coverage.” This provision is one of the main reasons the House is reluctant to vote for the Senate bill. Labor unions in particular oppose taxing high cost insurance policies.
The final GOP idea Klein points to is the fact that this bill is a private market plan. In a Democratic dream world, this bill would create a single-payer system where the government was the sole provider of health insurance. This idea was ruled out immediately and in its place, concepts were enacted like the exchanges in Section 1312 where the private insurance industry still maintains power.

5 Ways Bloggers Can Use OpenCongress to Build Public Knowledge About Congress

2010-02-09T02:50:00Z

One of the best things about getting news online, be it on blogs or elsewhere, is that it’s so easy to take the information and dig in deeper. Since bloggers and online journalists can link to primary sources for their reporting, everyone can easily engage with the issues they care about on a deeper level.

Political engagement is what we care about the most at OpenCongress. We think it’s fundamental for fighting corruption, dysfunction and apathy in our government. That’s why we’re striving to make the best primary source information on Congress for political bloggers to use. Every page on OpenCongress gives you—

The best one-page summary — all the crucial official information on bills, issues, senators and reps. is available at-a-glance on a single page.
The ability to write your members of Congress — login (or register) to your free “My OpenCongress” account, and emailing your federal elected officials about a bill is just one click away.
A chance to create political networks — use our pages to coordinate actions with people that feel the same way as you on an issue. OpenCongress pages have created powerful coalitions that have affected legislation.
Information in context — Rather than just showing bills, senators, reps. and issues, we let you know you which ones people are paying the most attention to on the internet and which ones are “hot.”

Here are five ways bloggers and journalists can use OpenCongress right now to help shed more light on D.C. and give people the information they need to hold power accountable:

1) Always Give a Link When You Write About Bills

Too often, bloggers and journalists don’t give a link when they write about bills in Congress. Sometimes they don’t even tell readers exactly which bill they’re talking about. Providing a link to a bill turns a blog post into an opportunity for real political engagement because it gives your readers a chance to get involved by doing their own research and taking action. Plus, links go a long way to boost the authority and value of your posts.

We have pages for every single bill in Congress. You can find “hot” bills here, and you can use the search bar in the upper right to find all other bills. Our bill pages combine official information about Congress with news and blog coverage, and the social wisdom of our users. See a sample bill page by clicking here.

As a bonus, every time you link to a bill on OpenCongress, your post will automatically show up on that bill’s OpenCongress page in the blog or news coverage feed. OpenCongress is the most popular government transparency site in the U.S., and we’ve had some reports of links on our bill pages creating a lot of traffic.

2) Link to the Exact Provision You’re Talking About

When you write about a specific provision in a bill, you can use OpenCongress to give your readers a link directly to the provision you’re talking about so they can read it in context for themselves. This way you can have the authority and trust that a primary-source link gets you, even when you’re writing about a single line of text, or a single word, within a gigantic, 1,000+ page bill.

To generate the links, just scroll over any section of legislative text on an OpenCongress bill page and a “permalink” button will appear. Click the button to create a custom url that you can use to bring your readers directly to the part of the bill you are writing about.

3) Show People How Their Members of Congress Voted

Every time Congress takes a vote on a bill, amendment or nomination, OpenCongress creates a page that shows how every member of Congress voted. Linking to our roll call pages lets your readers dig down to see how their own senators and representatives voted. Then they can either email their elected officials in one click from the OpenCongress page to tell them how they feel about their vote, or remember the vote for when election time comes around.

You can find roll call pages on the “actions and votes” tab of bill pages, or at our main roll call page.

We also offer the ability to link to vote position breakdowns by party, so, for example, you can easily share a link to the Democrats who voted “no” on health care, or the Republicans who voted “aye” on the stimulus.

4) Give an Unbiased Way to Learn About Members of Congress

People want to know who their representatives and senators actually are and what they actually stand for. But too often, that information is hidden by spin and bias. At OpenCongress, we have comprehensive, fact-based pages for every member of Congress including information on their voting history, bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship, committee assignments, biography and much more.

Members of Congress’s official pages are full of tailored information and politically-convenient statements. Wikipedia pages don’t have comprehensive information on actual bills and votes. When you write about the congresscritters, there’s no better place to link to than OpenCongress to give your readers an unbiased source to learn all about them. Our pages are built on raw data — members of Congress can’t hide from the facts we present.

5) Link to Race Pages to Build Knowledge About Candidates

As the mid-term election season ramps up, we’re providing simple pages that give you the basic facts for each Senate and House race. The 2010 RaceTracker is a non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project tracking every congressional race, nationwide.

So, when you’re talking about Sen. Arlen Specter re-election chances, you can easily share information on his challengers from the left and the right. RaceTracker pages show you who’s a confirmed candidate, who’s considering, and who is just rumored to be running. They also show you how much money each potential candidate has raised, and give you links to get more background info about each candidate.

What resources on Congress do you want that we aren’t providing? Leave a comment on this post or email us at writeus@opencongress.org and we’ll build it if it is technically possible.

OpenCongress is a non-partisan, non-profit public resource website — we encourage you to link back to this post and share what you find here with friends and bloggers. Thanks for using OpenCongress to help build factual public knowledge about Congress.

Read all blog posts here, or subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up with what’s really happening in Congress.

Rep. John Murtha [D, PA] Dead at 77

2010-02-08T14:07:00Z

Rep. John Murtha [D, PA-12], Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has died at the age of 77 from complications resulting from gall bladder surgery he had last week. Murtha has served as representative for Pennsylvania’s 12th district since 1974.

We have a comprehensive bio of Murtha on the OpenCongress Wiki, which you can view here.

Mutha’s seat will be filled by special election, making it a likely Republican pick-up. Pennsylvania’s 12th district voted for McCain by .4% in 2008 and it has a PVI rating of R+1.

Photo from Center for American Progress Action Fund used under CC license.

The Negotiations Will be Televised

2010-02-08T02:40:00Z

C-SPAN called out Obama last month for not televising health care negotiations like he said he would do while on the campaign trail. Well, since he’s starting over on negotiating health care, Obama has decided to let the C-SPAN cameras in on the next round of talks:

President Obama moved to jump-start the stalled health-care debate Sunday, inviting Republicans in Congress to participate in a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on the subject this month.

The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl. Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

“I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues,” Obama said. “What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”

If Republicans accept the invitation, the summit will be held on Feb. 25. Ezra Klein has some thoughts on what to expect. One thing to keep in mind is that Congress’s authority to use budget reconciliation for health care will expire in April when the new budget resolution for 2011 is passed. That means that barring some kind of breakthrough with Republicans, conservative Senate Dems, or progressive House Dems, after this meeting on Feb. 25, there won’t be much time left for Congress to pass a bill.

Snow Day

2010-02-08T02:07:00Z

I’m in New England where, ironically, it’s been beautiful and sunny all weekend. But I hear there’s been a bit of snow in Washington D.C. At least, that’s the excuse those lazy senators and representatives (and the rest of the federal government) are giving for canceling their work day today and postponing all votes until Tuesday.

Anyhow, I’m postponing the weekly “The Week Ahead in Congress” post until Tuesday morning, so grab the RSS feed to stay on top of Congress’s legislative schedule. There should be some interesting stuff coming up in the latter half of the week, like a jobs bill in the Senate and a bill to repeal the health insurance industry’s antitrust exemption in the House.

If you’re in D.C., hit someone in the face with a snowball for me, and I’ll see you on Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ll be here throughout the day with links and updates on health care, jobs, financial reform and the rest of Congress’s agenda.

Above photo, “All You See is the Rear View Mirror,” from Flickr user LitLinx used under a CC license.

The Week In Review

2010-02-05T11:49:00Z

Here is a look at what we’ve been up to this week at OpenCongress:

President Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 was released on Monday. A closer look at it reveals clues as to what the president has planned on a range of issues from health care to taxes.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint of Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military. Both agreed the policy should end. In other gay rights news, Congressional Republicans are fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from getting legally married in the District of Columbia.
Donny has a comprehensive rundown of what is ahead for financial reform in the Senate.
Congress is looking at a 775% tax increase for pipe tobacco.
The Democrats may finally have settled on a path forward to pass health care reform. The relevant question, though, is whether they can pull it off. Democrats, however, still do have a “Plan B.”
A bipartisan group of senators have introduced a bill (S.2977) banning civilian trials for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other co-defendants. In other national security news, the House is working on passing a cybersecurity bill (H.R.4061).
Senate Democrats announced their own jobs package.
After 10 months of waiting, the Senate finally confirmed Patricia Smith as solicitor of the Department of Labor. The problem of un-appointed nominees in the Obama administration, however, still persists.
If you at all enjoyed the Q&A session president Obama held with the House Republicans, sign the petition and demand a regular “question time.”

We here at OpenCongress greatly appreciate your comments and encourage participation on the site. Keep it up.