Sign-on letter regarding access to Congressional Documents

[James Love <love@tap.org>]

Gary Ruskin, from the Congressional Accountability Project, has been 
working with CPT, EFF, Jim Warren and others to gather signatures for a 
letter urging the House Rules Committee to take steps to give citizens 
better access to a number of key legislative documents, such as access to 
"chairman's marks," "committee prints" of bills, and other documents now 
mostly available to lobbyists.  The letter, and the initial sponsors, is 
attached below. Please circulate this widely.  jamie


To sign, 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

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.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Love / love@tap.org / P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
Voice: 202/387-8030; Fax 202/234-5176
Center for Study of Responsive Law
   Consumer Project on Technology; http://www.essential.org/cpt
   Taxpayer Assets Project; http://www.tap.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~