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A group of Representatives today sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asking her to oppose any legislation that would allow immigrants who are currently here illegally, to participate in a path to citizenship program. The letter below was signed by 97 members of the House of Representatives. It was written and circulated by Representatives Brian Bilbray (R-CA)[at right] and Lamar Smith (R-TX). Where they state, in the first line, that the group of supporters is "Democratic ...

The Office of Management and Budget today released a database of all the earmarks in the Fiscal Year 2005 budget. Hopefully they will get in the habit of putting together a database like this for all future budgets. Having this information available is a huge step forward for government transparency and accountability. But, if we really want to keep our elected officials accountable, we will need all the current information as it is put into current budgets by officials who are currently in ...

By far, the most commonly searched for term on OpenCongress is "Immigration." It is searched for nearly twice as often as the next most common search term, "Obama," and more than three times more often than "Iraq." Despite all of the interest, Congress has been slow to move on immigration legislation. Here's an overview of where things stand on this issue right now: As they have on almost every other major issue so far, the House of Representatives is moving more quickly on a comprehensive ...

To get a sense of the interweaving narratives currently playing out with the Congress-approved Iraq funding and troop withdrawal bill and President Bush's threatened veto, take a look at the titles of the most recent sequence of AP articles categorized under "Congress": Senate Democrats Vow to Push Withdrawal 1 Apr. 12:38:15 Obama Says Congress Will Fund Iraq War 1 Apr. 16:02:02 McConnell Wants Quick Action on Iraq 2 Apr. 00:18:17 Each one of these articles rehashes some mater...

Have you been following the news about the recent votes in the House and the Senate on the Iraq War, but aren't sure of the full details or implications? Or do you want to find out how your Representative or Senators voted? Even if you don't know the name of the bill in question, OpenCongress makes it easier to find. Just check out the bill on OpenCongress that's most written-about in the news and the bill most written-about on blogs -- they're both in the "sort-by" drop-down box on the "Bills" p...

The House of Representatives is slated to vote today on a budget resolution that Republicans claim constitutes "the largest tax increase in U.S. history." Budget resolutions are not what one might assume they are. This resolution is not the one used to dish out funds to programs and agencies for the next fiscal year. It is a resolution that takes a macro-perspective of the budget, establishing spending levels for entitlement programs, like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, as well as ...

About one month ago, OpenCongress opened its doors publicly, and since then we've been enthusiastically watching as bloggers and groups have picked up the site and started running with it. Here are some links to great uses of OpenCongress by political bloggers, membership groups, and people looking for an easy way to keep in touch with Congress. First, in the days after our launch last month we had a good rush of early mentions in news and blog outlets. We especially followed the comments and...

The Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007 passed the House yesterday, but not before a provision, staunchly opposed by the bill's sponsor and Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson (D-MS), was attached to it. The provision is based on a bill introduced last week by Steve Pearce (R-NM). It protects citizens who report suspicious activity from lawsuits. The bill was introduced, largely, in response to an incident that took place earlier this year. Re...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has decided to forgo the routine cloture battle that has repeatedly led to Republican victories against Democrat-sponsored Iraq legislation. The legislation currently at hand is nearly identical to a bill that Republicans defeated by cloture on March 15. It sets a series of benchmarks for the Iraqi government and a non-binding timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. This time however, these Iraq provisions are attached to an emergency war funding bi...

via In Broad Daylight: The Senate Rules and Administration Committee is planning to mark-up a bill on Wednesday to require senators to file their campaign-finance reports electronically. Consider the way the reports are filed currently: >Instead of quickly downloading their campaign financing data directly to the Federal Election Commission, like everybody else [the House of Representatives and Presidential candidates], senators print out their records on paper and snail-mail them to the S...

All of the recent scrambling to define exactly what an earmark is may be leading to less transparency in their disclosure. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on an accusation by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) (pictured at right, foreground) that the Appropriations Committees, and presumably their Democratic Chairman, are twisting the arm of the Congressional Research Service in order to help them cover up wasteful spending: >Nothing highlighted Congress's spending problem in last year's election...

In case you missed it, the war supplemental passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 218-212 today. The bill provides $124.1 billion, mostly for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government and a timeline for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Only two Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the bill. When the House voted in mid-February on a non-binding resolution disapproving of President Bush's surge plan, 17 Republicans voted for it. Having cast...

Don't bother watching the Senate session on C-SPAN 2 today. Senators have begun wading through a seemingly endless stream of amendments in what is referred to as, "vote-a-rama." All day, the Senate will be casting roll call votes on amendments to the fiscal year 2008 Budget Resolution, one after another, without any debate. So, to avoid all the milling about and name calling on the Senate floor today, you may as well keep track of the results as they roll in and are posted online. The budge...

Weeks of speculation about Democratic unity will be answered by the end of the day tomorrow. The House of Representatives is embarking on a debate, and eventually a vote, on the war supplemental, which funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a March 2008 date for troop withdrawal to begin and a date of September 2008 for the withdrawal to be completed. When the House, in mid-February, passed non-binding legislation that simply expressed disapproval of President Bush's plan to dep...

The Washington Times is writing that Congressional Democrats are "0 for 6" because their agenda has been "sidetracked" by the Iraq war. Whether it is proper for the Iraq war to take center stage in Congress is a matter of opinion -- a new poll suggests that Congress' job approval rating is down because of their failure to do anything substantive about the war. Regardless, the article gives a convenient rundown of where some of the other major issues of the Democratic platform stand at this poin...