IJMC - Political Activity Time Again!
Well, it's not quite as flashy as blacking out one's screens for protest,
but it's rather useful. I've sent my information, and request that you do
so as well. Also, pass this along to anyone you know who will aid in
this, let's show Congress what several million Internetters can do!
I've cut the basic info out, so if you don't want to read all of this,
just send the information requested to: <gary@essential.org>, by Monday,
June 24, 1996.
Name: __________________________________________________
Title (optional) _______________________________________
Affiliation (optional) __________________________________
Address: ________________________________________________
City, State, Zip (very important) _______________________
e-mail address: _________________________________________
That's all there is to it, I can't make it much easier for you to do. The
rest of the message from the CPSR is below. -dave
CPSR Members and Friends,
Your support is needed to encourage the House of Representatives Rules
Subcommittee to prepare recommendations regarding which House documents
will be made available online to the public. One factor in whether or not
these recommendations are developed will be the number of individuals who
sign onto the following letter. If you want more of our government records
available online, please sign on and repost this information to others.
Thanks!
Audrie
>
> SUMMARY:
> Many important Congressional documents are not available to
> the public via the Internet, including committee prints of bills,
> Congressional hearing records, texts of legislative amendments,
> and Congressional Research Service reports. A House Rules
> Subcommittee is considering preparing recommendations regarding
> which House documents will be made available online to the
> public.
>
> Following is a coalition sign on letter to Representative
> David Dreier, Chairman of the House Rules Subcommittee on Rules
> and Organization of the House, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
> urging them to provide online access to House documents.
>
> We are seeking individuals and organizations who wish to
> sign onto this letter. If you would like to add your name or the
> name of your organization to the signatories of this letter,
> please send the following information to <gary@essential.org>, by
> Monday, June 24, 1996.
>
> Name: __________________________________________________
> Title (optional) _______________________________________
> Affiliation (optional) __________________________________
> Address: ________________________________________________
> City, State, Zip (very important) _______________________
> e-mail address: _________________________________________
>
> The letter follows:
> _________________________________________________________________
> Honorable David Dreier
> Chairman, Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House
> House Rules Committee
> United States House of Representatives
> Washington, DC 20515
>
> Honorable Newt Gingrich
> Speaker of the House
> U.S. House of Representatives
> Washington, DC 20515
>
> RE: Requiring the House of Representatives to
> Provide Taxpayers with Access to House
> Documents via the Internet
>
> Dear Representatives Dreier and Gingrich:
>
> We are writing to urge the Subcommittee on Rules and
> Organization of the House to approve changes in House Rules
> requiring the House to provide the public with online access to
> House documents. As a part of The 21st Century Congress Project,
> the Subcommittee is considering issuing recommendations for new House
> Rules governing which House documents will be made available to
> the public via the Internet.
>
> We want to express the enormous gratitude of the American
> people and the Internet community for establishing THOMAS, which
> provides citizens with online access to some Congressional
> documents. Similarly, there is gratitude for the Speaker's repeated
> statements in support of providing access to Congressional documents via
> the Internet. For example, in a November 11, 1994 speech, Representative
> Gingrich said that "we will change the rules of the House to require that
> all documents and all conference reports and all committee reports be filed
> electronically as well as in writing and that they cannot be
> filed until they are available to any citizen who wants to pull
> them up. Thus, information will be available to any citizen in
> the country at the same moment it is available to the highest
> paid Washington lobbyist."
>
> And yet, as you know, many crucial House documents are still
> not available online. In spite of the Speaker's commitment, the
> Republican House and Senate leadership have followed in the same,
> old, discredited tradition of limited access to key legislative
> documents perfected under previous Democratic-controlled
> Congresses -- the same tradition that provides enormous political
> advantage to Washington lobbyists while leaving the American
> people without real-time access to the core documents of our
> democracy.
>
> We are growing increasingly frustrated with the failure of
> the 104th Congress to provide online access to these documents.
> We have repeatedly pointed out the effects of these anti-democratic
> policies during the 104th Congress.
>
> * In September, 1995 we wrote to Speaker Gingrich to protest
> the failure of the House Ways and Means Committee to provide
> online access to chairman's marks for a 700-page major tax
> bill involving billions of dollars. When we called the Ways
> and Means Committee to obtain a copy of those chairman's
> marks, we were told by Committee staff that we would have to
> purchase a printed copy from the Bureau of National Affairs
> (BNA). BNA told us the price of those chairman's marks was
> $27.
>
> * In January, during the debates over the telecommunications
> deregulation bill -- arguably the most important legislation
> approved in the 104th Congress -- the only source for the
> most up-to-date drafts of the legislation was not THOMAS or
> GPO Access but the Regional Bell Operating Companies
> Internet site. Committee prints and discussion drafts of
> the bill were not available through THOMAS or GPO Access.
> It is outrageous that citizens should have had to rely on
> telephone companies to obtain up-to-date drafts of bills
> produced by the United States Congress.
>
> * In May, we wrote to Senators Nancy Landon Kassebaum and John
> Warner regarding the failure of the Senate Labor Committee
> to provide online access to discussion drafts of legislation
> governing the privacy safeguards for medical records.
>
> We also have written letters to Rep. Vern Ehlers in
> December, 1994, to Speaker Gingrich in August, 1995, and to
> Senator Warner in March, 1996 requesting that this Congress
> provide online access to key Congressional documents. We have
> yet to receive a written response to any of these letters.
>
> Chairman Dreier has stated that the goal of The 21st Century
> Congress Project "is to develop and recommend changes in
> Congress' operations and legislative procedures that will allow
> technology to make the institution [Congress] more open,
> accountable and effective." That goal can only be met by
> requiring the House to make the following documents available to
> the public via the Internet:
>
> 1. Committee prints and discussion drafts of bills and
> Chairman's Marks. While citizens are examining the copies of
> bills which have been introduced and made available through
> THOMAS and GPO Access, Washington lobbyists are studying the
> paper copies of a committee print, discussion draft, or
> "chairman's mark" of a bill, which are the relevant
> documents for legislation. House policy currently prevents
> the U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) from
> disseminating committee prints without permission of the
> chair of the Committee. We believe this policy is
> indefensible and should be changed immediately. We urge you
> to require that the GPO disseminate all versions of House
> bills electronically, including all committee prints,
> widely-disseminated discussion drafts, and chairmans marks.
>
> 2. Verbatim transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected) from
> House Hearings. Lobbyists can buy transcripts of House
> hearings from transcribers, but most taxpayers have to wait
> months or more than a year for printed hearing records. We
> urge you to support providing online access to verbatim
> transcripts -- both corrected and uncorrected -- of House
> hearings as soon as possible after the hearings have taken
> place.
>
> 3. Prepared testimonies to House committees. We recommend that
> it should be House policy to ask witnesses testifying before
> House committees to provide an electronic copy of their
> prepared testimony, and then require the testimony to be
> immediately placed online on THOMAS and GPO Access. In
> addition, all government officials should be required to
> provide electronic copies of their prepared testimonies for
> public dissemination.
>
> 4. Voting records of Representatives. While the votes on bills
> reaching the floor of the House are recorded in the online
> version of the Congressional Record, it is often
> time-consuming and difficult for citizens to find these
> votes without extensive browsing of the documents. Even
> worse, the online version of the Congressional Record only
> contains 1993-present. Previous votes are not available
> online through THOMAS or GPO Access. We recommend that you
> support providing online access to voting records of
> Representatives with an easily searchable database, indexed
> by member name, bill title, bill number, and bill subject.
>
> 5. Amendments. We urge you to support providing online access
> to the texts of House amendments, and that until a bill or
> amendment is online, it should not be considered
> "introduced."
>
> 6. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue
> Briefs. In September 1994, CRS announced a pilot project
> for the electronic distribution of CRS Reports and Issue
> Briefs to Congressional offices. However, the taxpayers are
> still without online access to CRS Reports and Issue Briefs.
>
> 7. Committee reports. GPO Access distributes numbered
> committee reports for the 104th Congress. But not all
> committee reports are officially "reported," and therefore
> not all committee reports are made available through GPO
> Access. In addition, House committee reports before the
> 104th Congress are not available online through GPO Access
> or any other government online service. We urge you to
> support providing online access to all House committee
> reports, including those not officially "reported."
>
> 8. Transcripts (both corrected and uncorrected) of House
> committee mark-ups. We urge you to provide online access to
> the corrected and uncorrected texts of committee mark-ups as
> soon as possible after the mark-ups have taken place.
>
> 9. Conference reports. Conference reports for the second
> session of the 103rd and the full 104th Congress are now
> available online by searching the online versions of
> Congressional Record. However, conference reports before
> the 103rd Congress are not available online. We urge you to
> support providing online access to conference reports before
> the 103rd Congress.
>
> 10. Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports. The Federal
> Elections Commission (FEC) reports on campaign contributions
> are of great interest to millions of Americans. Online
> access through THOMAS or GPO Access would greatly broaden
> the dissemination of this important information. We urge
> you to require the FEC to provide online access to the full
> history of FEC campaign contribution data searchable by
> candidate name, contributor, PAC, party, and campaign
> committee.
>
> 11. Lobbyist Disclosure reports. The Lobbying Disclosure Act of
> 1995 requires collection of valuable information regarding
> the activities of lobbyists. Unfortunately, this
> information is only made available at the House Legislative
> Resource Center and the Senate Office of Public Records. We
> urge you to make lobbyist disclosure reports available
> online.
>
> 12. House Financial Disclosure reports. GPO Access provides
> online access to nearly all of the series of numbered "House
> Documents" in the 104th Congress. One egregious exception
> is House Financial Disclosure reports, which are not
> available online through GPO Access or THOMAS.
>
> 13. Statement of Disbursements of the House. During the 104th
> Congress, the House renamed, revised, and improved the old
> Clerk of the House reports, which document how each House
> member has spent their Member's Representational Allowance
> funds. These statements are not available either through
> GPO Access or THOMAS.
>
> We hope that The 21st Century Congress Project will
> recommend these documents be provided to the public via the
> Internet. If you have any questions about this letter, please
> contact Gary Ruskin at (202) 296-2787, or James Love at (202)
> 387-8030.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Gary Ruskin, Director, Congressional Accountability Project,
> gary@essential.org
> James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology,
> love@tap.org
> Jim Warren, columnist, open-government advocate and GovAccess
> Editor, 345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; 415-851-7075;
> fax/-2814; jwarren@well.com
> Lori Fena, Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation,
> lori@eff.org
> Audrie Krause, Executive Director, Computer Professionals for Social
>>Responsibility, akrause@cpsr.org (415) 322-3778
>
> cc: Representative Vern Ehlers
> Representative Rick White
> Representative Rick Boucher
> Representative Peter Hoekstra
> Representative Bill Thomas
> Representative Anthony Beilenson
> Representative Gerald Solomon
> Representative Joe Moakley
> Senator John Warner
> _________________________________________________________________
> LEGISLATIVE BACKGROUND AND CONTACT INFORMATION:
> The House Rules Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of
> the House has set up an e-mail address for comments from the
> public. You may want to send the Subcommittee an e-mail
> encouraging them to provide online access to the Congressional
> documents listed above. The Subcommittee's e-mail address is
> <cyberrep@aol.com>. Subcommittee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA)
> has no e-mail address listed, but his phone is (202) 225-2305,
> and fax is (202) 225-7018. Additional information about The 21st
> Century Congress Project is available at
> <http://www.house.gov/rules_org/21home.html>.
>
> Speaker Newt Gingrich's (R-GA) e-mail address is
> <GEORGIA6@HR.HOUSE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 225-4501, and fax is
> (202) 225-4656.
>
> Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) is the Chairman of the House
> Oversight Committee's Information Working Group. Hie e-mail
> address is <CONGEHLR@HR.HOUSE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 225-3831
> and fax is (202) 225-5144.
>
> Rep. Rick White (R-WA) is a founding member of the
> Congressional Internet Caucus. His e-mail address is
> <REPWHITE@HR.HOUSE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 225-6311, and fax is
> (202) 225-3524.
>
> Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) is a founding member of the
> Congressional Internet Caucus. His e-mail is
> <NINTHNET@HR.HOUSE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 225-3861, and fax is
> (202) 225-0442.
>
> Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) is leading the House Republican
> task force on House reform. "Reform Week" in the House is
> scheduled for the week of July 8. You may want to send e-mail to
> Rep. Hoekstra suggesting that online access to documents be
> included in and accomplished during "Reform Week." Rep.
> Hoekstra's e-mail address is <TELLHOEK@HR.HOUSE.GOV>.
> His phone is (202) 225-4401, and fax is (202) 226-0779.
>
> Rep, Bill Thomas (R-CA) is Chairman of the House Oversight
> Committee. His has no e-mail address listed, but his phone is
> (202) 225-2915, and his fax is (202) 225-2908.
>
> Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-CA) is the Ranking Minority Member
> of the House Rules Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the
> House. He has no e-mail address listed. His phone is (202)
> 225-5911, and fax is (202) 225-0092.
>
> Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-NY) is Chairman of the House Rules
> Committee. He has no e-mail address listed. His phone is (202)
> 225-5614, and fax is (202) 225-6324.
>
> Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) is Ranking Minority Member of the
> House Rules Committee. His e-mail address is
> <JMOAKLEY@HR.HOUSE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 225-8273, and fax is
> (202) 225-3984.
>
> Senator John Warner (R-VA) is Chairman of the Senate
> Committee on Rules and Administration. His e-mail address is
> <SENATOR@WARNER.SENATE.GOV>. His phone is (202) 224-2023, and
> fax is (202) 224-6295.
>
> You may also want to call your own members of Congress in
> support of public access to Congressional documents via the
> Internet. The Congressional switchboard phone number is (202)
> 224-3121.
>
> FOR MORE INFORMATION:
> The Congressional Accountability Project is a Ralph Nader
> Congressional reform group. For more information about online
> access to Congressional documents, send e-mail to
> gary@essential.org or call (202) 296-2787.
>
> to subscribe to Congressional Reform Briefings send the message:
> subscribe CONG-REFORM your name
> to listproc@essential.org
>
> PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
>
>
> Gary Ruskin
> Congressional Accountability Project | Internet: gary@essential.org
> P.O. Box 19446
> Washington, DC 20036
> Phone: (202) 296-2787 Fax: (202) 833-2406
>
>
--
Audrie Krause CPSR Executive Director
PO Box 717 * Palo Alto, CA * 94302
Phone: (415) 322-3778 * Fax: (415) 322-4748
* * E-mail: akrause@cpsr.org * *
* Web Page: http://www.cpsr.org/home.html *
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