From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Fri May 12 16:27:20 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from milan.essential.org (milan.essential.org [216.0.124.12]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E71CE2A063 for ; Fri, 12 May 2000 16:27:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from essential.org (ppp-5.essential.org [216.0.125.5]) by milan.essential.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA17369 for ; Fri, 12 May 2000 16:27:14 -0400 Message-ID: <391C692A.A4ADA50D@essential.org> Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 16:27:22 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Subject: corruption in Congress, and what to do about it Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Congressional Reform Briefings May 12, 2000 Following is an article in the May 8, 2000 edition of Roll Call. It's Time to Reform Hill Ethics Process: Committees Have Become Shields Against Thorough Investigations By Gary Ruskin, Director of the Congressional Accountability Project The battle against corruption in Congress has collapsed. Not surprisingly, the people who brought this about are Members of Congress themselves -- Republicans and Democrats alike. You put the kids in charge of discipline in the school -- with little accountability -- and this is what you get. The signs are everywhere. The recent case of Ann Eppard is a sad example. Eppard is a former chief of staff to Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. She is now perhaps the most powerful transportation lobbyist in Washington. In 1998, she was indicted for allegedly accepting $230,000 in illegal gratuities while she was on Shuster's staff. By all accounts, prosecutors had a strong case, with firm knowledge of the gifts and the official acts Eppard did for the donors. Nevertheless, Eppard pleaded guilty only to a misdemeanor, and received a paltry $5,000 fine. That wasn't even a slap on the wrist. But prosecutors claimed that it was best deal they could get, following the disastrous Supreme Court decision in the United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California. Under this decision, in illegal gratuities cases, prosecutors have to show a precise, and nearly unprovable, connection between a gift and a particular official act. Prosecuting bribery is even harder. For that, prosecutors usually need evidence of a quid pro quo on audio or videotape. "It's got to be a pretty stupid lobbyist," said Philip Heymann, a Harvard law professor and former deputy attorney general, "who tries to make an explicitly criminal deal with a legislator." The upshot is that our federal bribery and illegal gratuities laws pose little threat to corrupt Members or their staff. On top of that, the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department has been especially weak in enforcing the law. Attorney General Janet Reno suffered repeated public humiliations over Public Integrity's slipshod investigation into the 1996 campaign finance scandals. Less well-known are the inexplicable denials of routine Internal Revenue Service requests to empanel a grand jury to investigate whether then-Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) and her 1992 campaign manager Kgosie Matthews converted $281,000 in campaign funds to personal use, and failed to pay taxes on those funds. Incredibly, Public Integrity fought hard to ensure that then-Rep. Jay Kim (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty only to a misdemeanor, even though he took more than $250,000 in illegal foreign and corporate contributions, and probably stole a Congressional election. That's hardly a deterrent to election fraud. Although the House and the Senate have a constitutional duty to discipline their own Members, Democrats and Republicans have joined in a liberal permissiveness toward influence-peddling, graft and abuse of power. Together the two parties have transformed the ethics committees into a political shield -- for all but the most powerless Members -- against investigations of corruption. In a notably arrogant pro-corruption measure, the House actually revoked the limited right of ordinary citizens to file ethics complaints. In September 1997, the House required citizens to obtain a letter of transmittal from a House Member prior to filing a complaint. We called this rule the "Corrupt Politicians' Protection Act." Since 1997, no citizen has yet succeeded in obtaining such a transmittal letter. The bipartisan good ol' boys network has locked arms against the public. Democrats won't file against Republicans, and vice versa. The first rule of Congress is to protect your own. At this moment, the Congressional Accountability Project has evidence of serious wrongdoing by several House Members. We have prepared complaints against Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee; and Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.). However, no Member will provide the letter needed to initiate the ethics process. But then, the sloth of the House ethics committee is legendary. In 1996, for example, we filed a complaint against Shuster, regarding his web of legislative, political, financial and personal ties to Eppard. Since then, the ethics committee hasn't even issued an interim report on the matter. That's not so bad for Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), the chairman of the subcommittee investigating Shuster; he collected a generous airport provision from -- you guessed it -- Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Shuster. At least the Senate Ethics Committee allows citizens to file complaints about corruption. They just don't investigate them. When we filed a complaint against then-Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) regarding his receipt of a $37,125 one-day gain from a corrupt brokerage house, The New York Observer reported that "according to a well-placed Democratic source, the committee's then-chairman, Senator Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.] ... made it clear that there would be no investigation of Mr. D'Amato. 'There was never really any discussion about it, because McConnell was adamant.'" The principal bulwark against legislative corruption, the Federal Election Campaign Act, is in shambles. It's almost "anything goes" in the campaign finance arena. Perhaps worse, corporate and wealthy favor-seekers may now give unlimited undisclosed contributions to groups associated with Members of Congress that are authorized under Section 527 of the tax code. It's a devastating loophole. Public corruption is not a victimless crime. When money buys Congressional favors, votes and seats, those without money lose - a lot. Finally, the Federal Election Commission, which is supposed to police the federal campaign finance laws, has been hamstrung by Congress in so many ways that it cannot carry out its mission. But what was wrecked can be rebuilt. Here's how to root out corruption in Congress: * Strengthen the illegal-gratuities statute by reinstating the theory of "status gratuities." This would prohibit a public official from receiving a gift from a favor-seeker meant merely to keep the official "happy" or to "create a better working atmosphere" - without a connection to a specific official act; * Allow citizens to file ethics complaints in the House of Representatives; * Routinely send ethics complaints in the House and the Senate to outside counsel for investigation; * Pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform measure to ban soft money, and require sham "issue ads" that are really campaign ads to be paid for with federal, hard money; * Strengthen the FEC by appointing anti-corruption commissioners, increasing its investigative budget and authorizing random audits of campaigns; and * Require "527" organizations to disclose their contributors and obey federal, hard-money contribution limits if contributions are used for sham "issue ads." Countless Members of Congress boast of being tough on crime. It's time for them to walk their talk and summon the courage to get tough on corruption in Congress. Copyright 2000 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. <--------article ends here----------> The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. For more information, see our website at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Fri May 19 12:06:26 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from milan.essential.org (milan.essential.org [216.0.124.12]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 486E92A05E for ; Fri, 19 May 2000 12:06:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: from essential.org (ppp-2.essential.org [216.0.125.2]) by milan.essential.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA04595; Fri, 19 May 2000 12:06:13 -0400 Message-ID: <39256687.9CB63756@essential.org> Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 12:06:31 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Subject: Please, Senators, Put it on the 'Net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congressional Reform Briefings May 19, 2000 -- Ask Senators to put key Congressional information on the Internet. U.S. Senators Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) have set up a website to gather ideas from the public about how to use the Internet to improve the Federal government. The web address is . Senators Thompson and Lieberman should start by fixing the problem in their own backyard: the failure of the Congress to place its most useful documents on the Internet, including the most important texts of bills, draft committee and conference reports, a searchable database of Congressional voting records, Congressional Research Service reports, and much more. Please contact Senators Thompson and Lieberman through their new website and urge them to put the core working documents of our Congress on the Internet. BACKGROUND: Following is an op-ed from the November 30, 1999 edition of the Los Angeles Times. Congress Pulls the Shades on Net By Ralph Nader and Gary Ruskin It's almost 2000. We're deep into the Internet Age. And it seems that nearly everything is on the Internet, except Congress. If there's one cause that the information superhighway ought to serve, it's democracy, But, regrettably, for Congress this has become last in line. If you fire up your Web browser looking for even the most important congressional information, chances are you won't find it. Congress has refused for years to place many of its most useful materials on the Internet. This is especially true regarding what our members of Congress really do in Washington. We get mainly what they want us to know, not what we need. While individual members of Congress and congressional committees have Web pages, those pages are packed with self-serving fluff, obfuscation and public-relations claptrap. The Library of Congress maintains the Thomas Web page (http://thomas.loc.gov), which is great for historians. But why not also make available the most useful, up-to-date congressional materials, so that citizens could easily obtain the information they need to help shape legislative efforts and participate in furthering congressional accountability? To ask the question is to answer it. Voting records are central to the democratic process. Access to them is essential to political responsibility. But, remarkably, Congress has yet to place on the Internet a searchable database of congressional votes, indexed by bill name, bill subject, bill title, member name, etc. Such a database would be inexpensive to produce and simple to maintain. Currently, roll call votes are available via the Thomas Web site. That's a start. But they aren't in a searchable database, so it is time-consuming to compile a member's voting record from this site. Citizens ought to be able to type in a member's name and a topic and out would come that member's voting record on that issue. If members of Congress are so proud of what they do in Washington, they ought to make it easy for citizens to obtain their voting records. Congressional Research Service reports are some of the best research that the federal government does and provide much of the background that Congress uses to draft our laws. Yet, in a notable backhand to taxpayers, Congress has arranged for CRS to place about 3,400 of its reports and products on an internal congressional intranet for use by members of Congress and their staffs but not the public. Taxpayers ought to be able to read the research that they pay for. But citizens cannot obtain most CRS reports directly. Instead, they must purchase them from private vendors--at high cost--or engage in the time-consuming process of requesting a congressman to send CRS reports to them. Often, citizens wait for weeks or months before such a request is filled. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and David Price (D-N.C.) have introduced legislation (S393, HR 654) to place CRS reports on the Internet. But these bills are stalled in committee. Obviously, texts of bills are Congress' most important work product. Why should high-priced lobbyists have special access to the most important texts of bills? Congress should require that all texts of bills be placed on the Internet as soon as they are printed or are made available to lobbyists or members of a committee or subcommittee. The most important texts of bills--working versions, discussion drafts, chairmen's marks, managers' marks--are infrequently placed on the Internet. Draft committee and conference reports, too, rarely make the Internet. Many Washington lobbyists get paid large sums of money to insert tiny but important provisions in committee or conference reports. Such provisions affect the way a law is carried out, or how government funding is distributed. Congress should place these draft reports, too, on the Internet promptly. There are lots of arguments about what, if anything, the Internet is good for. But there is no question that the Internet is magnificent for distributing information. Let's demand that Congress harness this technology to inform the voters and strengthen our democracy. <-------op-ed ends here-------> Following is a November 30, 1999 article from Slate Magazine. How Congress Resists the Web By Eve Gerber The simplest way the Internet can enhance democracy is by making buried information easily available to citizens. By putting documents of all kinds online, agencies let in disinfecting sunlight and make themselves accountable to the public. By and large, the federal government has made impressive strides toward making itself Web-accessible. But there's one big exception: the U.S. Congress. Congress is ostensibly fascinated with cyberspace. Fifty Web-related bills and resolutions are pending on Capitol Hill. Over 100 members of Congress participate in an Internet caucus. Yet, when it comes to posting basic information about its inner workings, Congress has been shamefully slow. The result is that it protects the privileged status of corporate lobbyists and insulates back-room deals from public scrutiny while fencing out concerned and engaged citizens. Let's say you want to find out something about the latest draft of a bill. You might try the home pages of the House and Senate, which link to Capitol Hill tourism tips and member home pages. But these sites provide scattershot coverage of legislation revisions. Nor are the pages of the legislation's sponsors likely to help. Most of these are filled with promotional dross. Biographical information, press releases, and lengthy legislative accomplishment lists are complemented by intern solicitations and flag request forms. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., includes his recipe for Chocolate Nut Pie. You may get closer to what you're looking for at GPO Access, a Government Printing Office site where citizens can download legislation and search Congressional Record archives. The clumsy and confusing THOMAS -- a Library of Congress site -- duplicates some of this information. It contains bills, roll-call votes, and links to congressional committee sites. But neither of these sites gives you the up-to-date information that might enable you to understand how a bill is working its way through the legislative process. "There is much more information online about Congress than at any time in history," according to Jason Poblete, a spokesman for the House Administration Committee. That is undoubtedly true, but it's hardly a meaningful statement. There is far less information about Congress online than there should and easily could be. Here is what's missing and why: Working Drafts of Bills and Amendments. Citizens can access bills, but working drafts are rarely posted. That's because under current policy, THOMAS cannot post an update until the text is processed by the Government Printing Office. The delay guarantees that lobbyists have time to get drafts and influence the process before the general public knows what's happening. Adam Thierer, Internet policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, says that "the messy nature of the legislative process makes it difficult to keep a site up to date." But Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project, a Ralph Nader-related organization that watches Congress, asserts that committee chairmen squelch the posting of drafts because, "If citizens figured out what was in some of these bills, there would be public outcry against them." Hearing Transcripts and Statements. To find out about congressional hearings, the curious must locate the appropriate committee site. Some committees post opening remarks and transcripts, but the coverage is scattershot. THOMAS publishes hearing testimony, but it often takes months before the transcripts are "processed." While the public waits, lobbyists purchase uncorrected transcripts from pricey transcription agencies. Poblete counsels patience and claims that all committees will offer video archives of hearings someday. In the meantime, Congress could make all its committees' hearings available with the help of a few $200 scanners. Congressional Research Service Reports. Congress spends over $64 million a year on a research service that analyzes thousands of issues, from abortion to Zambia. The reports, which are often excellent, are public documents that the public can't easily get its hands on. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., posts several hundred CRS reports on his site, and members give them away in response to specific constituent requests. Still, citizens often have to wait weeks for research that a congressional staffer can download in seconds. As a result, commercial services are able to make money selling bootleg copies. Penny Hill Press, for instance, peddles CRS reports for $49 per order. Why not put these guys out of business? Ruskin contends that Congress hoards the reports because "members see CRS as their own fiefdom and they like the ability to give reports as a favor to constituents." A congressional task force is "considering" making all CRS reports public. It is supposed to report its conclusions by the end of the year. Voting Records. To find out how a member voted on a particular bill, citizens must comb through archives of roll-call votes, which are categorized by bill number and searchable by topic. Constituents can't search by representative name, at least at any official government site. Ruskin argues that "easily searchable voting records are essential to democratic accountability." Poblete says Congress is considering how to make voting records easier to access. Lobbyist Disclosure Reports. These reports detail how much lobbyists are paid to work on a particular issue and in theory what, who, and how they lobby. They can make for very interesting reading, but to get them you have to go in person to a little office in the Capitol. Ruskin argues that posting the reports would allow citizens to trace patterns of influence. Citizens are not able to access these reports online, even though they are electronically stored. Poblete claims that the reports will be posted as soon as Congress resolves "technical hurdles." House, Senate, and Personal Financial Disclosure Reports. Members must report how they spend their "representational allowances" and have to file personal financial disclosure reports. The disclosures can be used to ferret out wrongdoing and conflicts of interest. The data are computerized, but for "policy reasons" the reports are not available online. Congress is "reconsidering" whether to post them, according to Poblete. Five years ago, Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich promised to make important information available online "at the same moment that it is available to the highest-paid Washington lobbyist." That did happen, but only once--when Congress instantaneously published the Starr Report. When it comes to its own dirty laundry, there seems to be no such hurry. <-------article ends here---------> Today's Washington Post has an article about the e-Government initiative, "Senators Go Looking for E-Ideas." The Congressional Accountability Project works to reform the U.S. Congress. For more information about how Congress has failed to place its most important information on the Internet, see the Congressional Accountability Project's website at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Tue May 23 17:55:08 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from milan.essential.org (milan.essential.org [216.0.124.12]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DEE352A320 for ; Tue, 23 May 2000 17:55:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from essential.org (ppp-10.essential.org [216.0.125.10]) by milan.essential.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA21252; Tue, 23 May 2000 17:55:00 -0400 Message-ID: <392AFE26.271749D8@essential.org> Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 17:54:46 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Subject: Locked out of the Hearing Room(.com) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Congressional Reform Briefings May 22, 2000 Here is a great example of how the U.S. Congress won't put its own documents on the Internet. Phil Angell is starting a company, called HearingRoom.Com, which will give you Internet access to every congressional hearing -- at a cost of about $5,000-$15,000 per year. You read that right. What a slap in the face to the taxpayers. Congressional hearings are public information. We taxpayers paid for these hearings. We ought to be able to read them, on the Internet, for free. HearingRoom.com brags that "Once we begin full production, we will cover every hearing - full committees, subcommittees, mark-ups, Senate or House....Complete transcripts of hearings will be available in the archives after coverage has ended. Exact timing of transcript availability depends on which product is selected. Transcripts of real-time coverage are available in the archives twenty (20) minutes after the hearing concludes; availability of near-time transcripts is two (2) hours after the gavel." Of course, the high cost of HearingRoom.Com locks out almost everyone except corporate lobbyists, trade associations and law firms. So they get special access to the inner workings of Congress while the rest of us remain in the dark. You can do something about this. Tell your Members of Congress to put Congressional hearings on the Internet. The Congressional switchboard phone is (202) 225-3121. To find the names, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of your Members of Congress, see . Following is a May 22, 2000 article in the Washington Post about HearingRoom.Com. A Hill Hearing Aid By Dwight Thompson Much has been said and written about the new economy overshadowing Washington's old world of politics and government. Phil Angell's HearingRoom.com is out to use the former to transform the latter. He's the latest Washington area entrepreneur to use new technology to change the way citizens communicate with the federal government and find out about its workings. HearingRoom.com delivers the content of one of the most basic of congressional functions: the hearing. Using voice-recognition technologies and the Internet, the company claims to be able to deliver in near-real time transcripts of any congressional hearing. Angell, 55, was chief of staff to former Environmental Protection Agency administrator William D. Ruckelshaus and later directed government relations and corporate communications for Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., the waste-removal company, and Monsanto Co., the chemicals giant. Angell said those experiences made him keenly aware of the tightly controlled market for information on congressional hearings and the current system's limitations. "What this is really about is the speed of getting the information out," Angell said. "Media gets the info out like a jack rabbit, business like an antelope, yet Congress is a tortoise. We're creating a business that is like puttting a jet pack on the turtle." The surest way not to miss anything at a hearing on legislation that could affect an industry or a client--actually planting someone in the hearing room--has in recent years grown increasingly difficult. And the two main providers of congressional transcripts, Angell said, cover only a fraction of the total number of hearings, rarely provide transcripts in under 24 hours and are not taking full advantage of new technologies, mainly speech recognition and streaming text and audio on the Internet. Angell believed he could develop and apply these new technologies to overcome the competition's limitations and deliver a product he knew from personal experience was in high demand. There is an ever-increasing number of companies, individuals and interest groups affected by federal lawmaking, he said. Last May, he decided to turn his idea into reality. Angell tapped into Washington's "great hidden information market," said David Price, director of content for Nexis, the news division of online information powerhouse Lexis-Nexis. "There's really a core of customers for whom it is very important to get to the 'bare metal' of information, the very words that the [lawmakers] speak." A Foot in the Door Angell's first step was forming a partnership with Chris Chapin, a longtime friend and successful business consultant, and Bivings Woodell Inc., a District-based Internet design and consulting firm. Then Angell's new company had to gain membership to the House and Senate Press Gallery and access to all of Congress's 192 committees and subcommittees, which share 44 hearing rooms in the House and 25 in the Senate. With a little bit of lobbying, Angell convinced a gallery committee that HearingRoom.com's Web-based approach to delivering information made it a valuable public resource, the necessary prerequisite for gallery membership. Angell next had to find the cash necessary to install a private, fully digital network in every hearing room. Over half of the initial start-up cost--a relatively small $750,000--was provided by the owners. The rest came from Columbia Financial Advisors in a private placement. To date, that is the only capital the company has raised, but it is negotiating for a second round of venture capital investment. The next critical step was creating the software interface that makes the whole thing work, and securing proprietary rights so others won't be able to simply resell the information Hearing-Room.com gathers. "It's a marriage of existing technology, proprietary modifications of that technology and new applications which have never been taken to the market before," Angell said. Consultants from Bivings Woodell worked with a range of partners specializing in audio and text streaming, speech recognition and voice-writing. The combination results in a system that delivers a synchronized stream of text and audio with 95 percent accuracy and on just a five- to 10-minute delay. The system relies on the skills of a voice writer, someone trained in dictating speech into a specialized microphone called a stenomask. Highly specialized, voice writers are normally employed to transcribe legal proceedings. With the aid of voice-recognition software, HearingRoom's voice writers can accurately transcribe the multitude of voices in a congressional hearing and deliver the result quickly. HearingRoom.com does not plan to fully launch until June 12, when the wiring to the committee and subcommittee chambers is completed. Angell said he believes HearingRoom can be profitable in its first year of operation. Subscribers to the service can expect to pay handsomely--between $5,000 and $15,000 per year, depending on the level of service. Hearing-Room.com's clients already include such well-known names as Patton Boggs, Arnold & Porter, Hill & Knowlton, Hogan and Hartson, Monsanto and Gallaudet University. Angell said he is unable to put a dollar figure on the market for Hearing-Room's product, but believes that reaching beyond the core lobbying community is where the company's future really lies. He believes a whole host of groups without direct access to hearings will want the information: law firms, trade groups, the news media, unions, nonprofit organizations and embassies. Jim McCarthy, marketing director for HearingRoom.com, sums up their expectations of the market: "It's like dangling a steak over a river. You can't tell how many crocodiles are going to show up or how much they're going to eat, but you do know that crocodiles love red meat." Joseph Villarosa, an independent Internet industry analyst who was hired by HearingRoom.com to evaluate its service, said, "You have to realize that text streaming of congressional proceedings is only one of many, many forums where this company can thrive. They can just as easily be the first to move into streaming text of conference calls, college lectures, press conferences and so on." But HearingRoom.com has competition, and it isn't sitting still. Its two main rivals, Federal Document Clearing House and Federal News Service, both offer a limited number of congressional transcripts over the Web, and say that for certain hearings, they can deliver transcripts in real time. Tool for Lobbyists One of HearingRoom.com's clients is the Wexler Group, a District-based boutique lobbying firm that has clients in the health care, transportation and science industries. The firm views HearingRoom as a tool that will help its lobbyists perform their jobs better and with greater efficiency. Sena Fitzmaurice, a director at Wexler, appreciates the time-saving factor that archived hearings and key word alerts provide. Subscribers enter key words when they order information on a hearing, and are alerted when those words are spoken during the proceeding. "For us, the key word feature really sells it," Fitzmaurice said. "It allows you to be at your desk, doing other work." Jay Byrne, director of governmental affairs for Monsanto, has seen Hearing-Room.com's technology work. While describing it as a "very cool idea," he said its most effective marketing tool will be its value as a time saver. "This tool has kept me out of several airplanes," he said. © 2000 The Washington Post Company <----------- article ends here------------> The Congressional Accountability Project works to reform the U.S. Congress. For more information about how Congress has failed to place its most important information on the Internet, see the Congressional Accountability Project's website at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Wed Jul 26 12:21:20 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from milan.essential.org (milan.essential.org [216.0.124.12]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB8882A05E for ; Wed, 26 Jul 2000 12:21:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: from essential.org (ppp-1.essential.org [216.0.125.1]) by milan.essential.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA20870 for ; Wed, 26 Jul 2000 12:21:09 -0400 Message-ID: <397F0F6D.474ED1EC@essential.org> Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 12:18:53 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Subject: Stop the $3,800 congressional pay raise Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congressional Reform Briefings July 26, 2000 Opponents of the proposed $3,800 congressional pay raise sent letters today to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and House Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) urging them to turn down the pay raise. The letter follows. Dear Majority Leader Lott and Minority Leader Daschle: We urge you to reject the proposed $3,800 congressional pay raise, which would lift the base congressional salary to $145,100 per year. Members of Congress neither deserve nor need this raise. They are already overpaid, enjoying a lavish $141,300 base annual salary, plus pensions, benefits, perquisites, a special $3,000 annual tax deduction, as well as loopholes to facilitate junketeering and some personal use of campaign funds. This is more than enough to provide a high-flying lifestyle that befits princes more than public servants. Over the last decade, Members of Congress have been quick to give themselves pay hike after pay hike. Since the infamous 1989 midnight congressional paygrab, House Members have received six raises, Senators seven. Congressional salaries grew by $51,800 -- about $17,000 above inflation. In 1989, the base congressional salary was $89,500 per year. Such profiteering from the public purse is especially grating when our federal government is deep in debt. Given the enormous $5.7 trillion burden of federal debt, Members of Congress should lead by example, and decline to further overcompensate themselves. This effort at self-enrichment is waste of taxpayer dollars, an insult to the taxpayers, and a violation of the public trust. It detracts from the dignity of Congress, as well as its moral authority to govern. Perhaps no congressional act is more unpopular than a congressional pay raise. Please listen to your constituents: exercise dignified self-restraint, and forgo the pay raise. Sincerely, Gary Ruskin, Director, Congressional Accountability Project Paul Jacob, National Director, U.S. Term Limits Paul Weyrich, President, Free Congress Foundation Peter J. Sepp, Vice President for Communications, National Taxpayers Union Jim Mangia, National Secretary, Reform Party of the United States of America Steve Dasbach, National Director, Libertarian National Committee Ted Muga, Chairman, American Reform Party <--------letter ends here----------> WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP: Please ask your U.S. Senators to oppose the congressional pay raise. The Congressional switchboard phone is (202) 225-3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress, see . Following are three editorials about the proposed congressional pay raise. Boston Herald, July 22, 2000 Pay Raises Beyond Party With the economy humming, members of the U.S. House decided to reward themselves with a healthy pay raise. Democrats think there isn't enough in the budget surplus for a tax cut while Republicans are wary of new spending. But the leadership of the two parties can agree on one thing - that upping their paychecks is always in order. Lawmakers voted 250-173 to RELUCTANTLY accept a 2.7 percent increase, raising their salaries by $ 3,800 beginning Jan. 1. This is their third pay raise in four years. Hey, they're only getting a measly $ 141,300 plus benefits now. How ever do they make ends meet?... Legislators are the only employees who can give themselves a raise. Congress has even arranged things so it has to vote AGAINST a pay raise, otherwise members get it automatically. During the few minutes of debate on the latest congressional pay grab, no one spoke in favor of the measure (It's hard to get up and say, "We really deserve this.") and only two members complained. This is one vote congressmen probably won't brag about in the fall campaign. <---------------> Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 23, 2000 Backdoor Raise Nobody had the guts to speak against it, but an effort to kill an automatic congressional pay raise failed handily last week. Beginning in January, members of Congress will make $ 145,100 a year, up 2.7 percent. It's their third raise in four years.... The problem here isn't that our federal senators and representatives don't deserve to be well compensated, but rather that this whole process is a crock. First, the notion that those making six-figure salaries need a 'cost of living' adjustment is a perversion of the concept. Low-wage workers need such raises to stay ahead of inflation; the wealthy can fend for themselves. Second, the law Congress uses to give itself more money is of dubious constitutionality. Passed in 1989, it shields Congress from controversy by granting the raises automatically unless members vote to block them. But in 1992, the 27th Amendment was ratified. It states, 'No law, varying compensation for the services of the senators and representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.' The obvious intent is to force members of Congress to face voters before they may collect the higher pay. That objective will be accomplished in this case, given the November elections. But previous raises under the 1989 law have been awarded during nonelection years -- yet the courts have signed off, holding the backdoor hikes don't violate the Constitution because they kicked in automatically, not as a result of a new 'law.' Thus the federal judiciary has abetted congressional efforts to render the 27th Amendment moot. In order to restore the integrity of the process and the 27th Amendment, Congress should repeal the cowardly 1989 legislation. Then whenever members want a raise, they can publicly debate the issue and go on the record with 'yeah' or 'nay.' <----------------> The Florida Times-Union, July 13, 2000 Congress: Meeting of the Minds In this contentious election year, there seems to be only one issue that congressional leaders of both parties view as so vital to the national interest that they are duty-bound to rise above petty politics and present a united, bipartisan front. That issue, of course, is a congressional pay raise. We won't keep you in suspense. Politicians favor the proposal. Under a 1989 law, members are automatically entitled to a raise every year unless they vote specifically not to accept it, which has been done in the past, through an amendment to the Treasury Department appropriations bill. Last month, however, the leadership on both sides of the aisle agreed not to attack the other's incumbents for supporting higher pay. The Treasury funding bill passed a House subcommittee Tuesday with the raise intact. Unless something unexpected happens on the House or Senate floor, members will get a $ 3,800 increase in January -- lifting their salaries to more than $ 145,000 a year, plus perks. 'The Bible says the worker is worthy of his hire,' House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said. 'These members of Congress on both sides of the aisle work hard.' Most other people also work hard, and they make a fraction of that amount. This raise is Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor (taxing people who make far less) and giving it to the rich (members of Congress). It's hard to imagine, but members of Congress were paid just $ 44,600 in 1975. A local congressional aide once argued that his boss really was not getting a raise, only a cost-of-living adjustment. That's fine for Capitol Hill, where increasing spending by a billion dollars isn't 'increasing spending' because of baseline budgeting. But it's difficult for people outside the Beltway to understand why it isn't a pay increase when pay is increased. Most people don't get raises, or COLAS, automatically, regardless of job performance. An argument might be made that Congress deserves a raise as a reward for the budget surplus. But that resulted from a healthy economy, not tough decisions made in Washington. Congress, admittedly with some prodding from the White House, has been spending some of the surplus instead of using all of it for debt reduction and tax relief. Congress got just a 39 percent approval rating -- 52 percent disapproval -- in the most recent Gallup Poll. Don't look for those numbers to shoot skyward anytime soon. <-------------> The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. For more information, see our website at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Thu Sep 14 15:16:20 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from ns2.vpinet.net (ns2.vpinet.net [209.76.252.7]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6BF132A05E for ; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 15:16:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 7456 invoked by alias); 14 Sep 2000 18:42:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO essential.org) (216.250.225.137) by envirocitizen.org with SMTP; 14 Sep 2000 18:42:01 -0000 Message-ID: <39C122F4.38BA2B75@essential.org> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 15:11:48 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Senate "graft for judges" provision threatens corruption of federal judiciary Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Congressional Reform Briefings September 14, 2000 -- Please ask your U.S. Senators to oppose a "graft for judges" provision that would allow federal judges to accept speaking fees. Senate Republicans have quietly tucked away a "graft for judges" provision in the Senate appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary (CJSJ) to allow federal judges to accept speaking fees, opening the federal judiciary to corruption by honoraria. Such honoraria would be graft, pure and simple. The "graft for judges" provision threatens judicial independence. Plenty of corporations and wealthy folks would be thrilled to put money in the pockets of federal judges, who have tremendous power to shape the law. The "graft for judges" provision is awaiting a Senate floor vote. There is no comparable provision in the House version of the CJSJ bill. Federal judges are already overpaid. They neither need a pay raise nor honoraria. Federal district court judges currently earn a generous salary of $141,300 per year plus pensions and benefits. Appellate court judges earn $149,900 per year, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court earn $173,600 and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist earns $181,400 per year. Please call, fax, or email your Senators to encourage them to oppose the "graft for judges" speaking fees provision in the Senate Commerce, Justice, State, Judiciary appropriations bill. The congressional switchboard phone number is (202) 225-3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress, see . Following is today's Washington Post article about the "graft for judges" provision. Bill Would End Ban on Honoraria For Judges By Dan Morgan Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday , September 14, 2000 ; A01 Responding to a private plea from Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for "economic relief" for judges, leading Senate Republicans have inserted a provision in a pending appropriations bill that would end an 11-year ban on speaking fees for members of the federal judiciary. The proposal, requested by Rehnquist in a letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this year, would drastically alter a 1989 ethics reform that prohibited honoraria for members of Congress, judges and senior officials of the executive and legislative branches. In theory, the move could net Supreme Court justices and other well-known judges tens of thousands of dollars in extra income annually. The proposed provision, buried deep in a 2001 spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 18 and awaiting final action, would lift the restriction only for judges serving a lifetime appointment. Under the measure, federal judges could collect money for appearances under guidelines and limits that would be determined by the Federal Judicial Conference, the judiciary's own policymaking body. In his letter to McConnell in April, Rehnquist argued that the removal of the ban is sorely needed to ease the growing disparity between the pay of judges and of members of the private legal profession, in which first-year salaries at blue-ribbon New York law firms are now reaching $140,000. "It is to the point that in today's legal market a first-year associate in a law firm could make as much in salary as a federal judge," Rehnquist said. The disparity, he warned, harms the ability of the judiciary to recruit and retain the most capable lawyers. Independent judiciary sources noted yesterday that the 1989 ban on honoraria was coupled with a commitment to adjust judicial salaries annually for inflation. That has not occurred. However, the dropping of the honoraria ban for judges was quickly assailed by spokesmen for several nonprofit groups that closely monitor judicial ethics. The ban was originally spurred by widespread allegations that corporations and interest groups were using the payments to lobby or influence federal officials. "Totally unacceptable and outrageous," said Meredith McGehee, senior vice president of Common Cause. "To have judges go down that path where impartiality is supposed to be the hallmark of our judicial system is wrong." "Companies will be lining up to cut the judges' checks," said Mike Casey, vice president of the Environmental Working Group, which has teamed up with another nonprofit organization, Community Rights Counsel, to disclose how corporations have used junkets for judges to influence environmental litigation. "It's shocking, it's wrong and it makes the judges look greedy," he added. The Judicial Conference, which is pushing hard for a cost-of-living adjustment this year, did not ask for the honoraria change and has had no comment on the provision. A House version of the bill funding the judiciary, which the full chamber passed in June, does not contain the provision. The language would almost certainly face major opposition if it comes to the Senate floor as part of a single appropriations bill. But it could end up being folded into a giant bill sweetened to gain broad approval from the Clinton administration and congressional Democrats. The annual salary of the U.S. chief justice is $181,400, and the eight associates make $173,600. The salaries of federal appellate court judges and district judges are $150,000 and $141,300, respectively. In addition, federal judges may earn up to $21,195 a year from outside sources, such as teaching, but not from honoraria for speeches. The judges may also accept all-expenses-paid travel and accommodations at educational or professional events. In 1995, the Wall Street Journal detailed the extended expenses-paid trips of a number of Supreme Court justices to the French Riviera, the Austrian Alps, Spain and other watering spots. A number of the justices are millionaires with substantial assets; but according to their latest financial disclosure reports, some of the poorest are the conservative members of the court. Justice Antonin Scalia's assets were valued below $535,000; Justice Clarence Thomas reported assets worth between $150,000 and $410,000; and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was the poorest, with assets valued below $195,000. McConnell did not mention that fact in a letter sent earlier in the year to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that draws up the annual spending bill for the federal judiciary. McConnell urged a "new approach" to the judiciary's compensation problem that would remove it from the testy annual debate in Congress over salaries paid from taxpayer funds. The Judicial Conference, he said, could adopt regulations later to avert conflicts and impropriety. "I believe that this legislation is appropriate as both a policy matter and a legal matter," he wrote. © 2000 The Washington Post Company <----article ends here----> The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. For more information, see our website at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Sat Oct 14 20:33:40 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from ns2.vpinet.net (ns2.vpinet.net [209.76.252.7]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 04E7D2A315 for ; Sat, 14 Oct 2000 20:33:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 27522 invoked by alias); 15 Oct 2000 00:09:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO essential.org) (216.250.232.28) by envirocitizen.org with SMTP; 15 Oct 2000 00:09:36 -0000 Message-ID: <39E8FB9E.8E287FA9@essential.org> Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2000 20:34:38 -0400 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: 60 Minutes on Shuster and Corruption in Congress Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congressional Reform Briefings October 14, 2000 Tomorrow, the CBS News program 60 Minutes will air a segment on corruption in Congress, featuring the case of House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, and his legislative, political, financial and personal ties to top transportation lobbyist Ann Eppard. According to 60 Minutes, the segment will cover "Bud Shuster: How close a relationship can a congressman and a lobbyist have? A House ethics committee says the relationship between House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster and Ann Eppard went over the line. Mike Wallace reports. Robert Anderson is the producer." The Congressional Accountability Project asked Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate Chairman Shuster and lobbyist Eppard on February 28, 1996, and filed an ethics complaint against Chairman Shuster on September 5, 1996. That complaint led the House ethics committee to issue a letter of reproval for Chairman Shuster. Congressional Accountability Project Director Gary Ruskin was interviewed by Mike Wallace and will appear in the segment. FOR MORE INFORMATION about the Shuster case and corruption in Congress, see the Congressional Accountability Project website at . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Tue Nov 14 11:53:06 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from ns2.vpinet.net (ns2.vpinet.net [209.76.252.7]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1435229AEE for ; Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:53:05 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 16692 invoked by alias); 14 Nov 2000 16:55:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO essential.org) (216.250.232.28) by envirocitizen.org with SMTP; 14 Nov 2000 16:55:46 -0000 Message-ID: <3A116DEF.D5918F24@essential.org> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:53:03 -0500 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Wired: Why Congress still hasn't put its most important documents on the Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congressional Reform Briefings November 14, 2000 Following is an excellent article about the failure of Congress to put its most important documents on the Internet, from the November issue of Wired Magazine. Highlight: journalist David Corn asked Senator John McCain "Could it be that members of Congress want to control information about themselves and don't want to be scrutinized?" McCain answered "Exactly!" http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/govdocs.html Filegate.gov: The biggest Congressional scandal of the digital age: Politicians aren't putting public docs on the Net, and no one seems to care. By David Corn A political consultant walks into a bar in Washington, DC, and notices that the TV is playing a closed-captioned news broadcast. In one of those moments that give DC its wonkish tang, he has an inspiration: Why not use technology to make Congress more accessible to the public? So, in April 1999, Philip Angell, then head of corporate communications for Monsanto, started thinking about congressional hearings - the year-round pageant of experts, lawyers, government officials, lobbyists, academics, and miscellaneous citizen-advocates who testify before House and Senate committees. Although some hearings are empty exercises in showboating, the bulk are noteworthy, particularly those that involve pending legislation, appropriations, nominations, and oversight of government agencies. Angell knew it was often difficult to attend the hearings that matter: The committee rooms are not large; most congressional leaders couldn't care less about making life easier for spectators; and flocks of lobbyists and reporters descend upon the meatiest sessions, sometimes paying line-standers to reserve spots. C-Span airs a limited number of hearings - some live, some after the fact. And, upholding bureaucratic tradition, the committees and subcommittees themselves don't release printed transcripts for many months. Even though most hearings are officially "public," it's not easy for citizens to tap in. Surely, Angell thought, technology could open some doors. He was right. This June, Angell launched HearingRoom.com (www.hearingroom.com), a Web site that uses voice recognition technology to deliver real-time streaming text and audio of congressional hearings. In the 14 months since his brainstorm, he accomplished what Congress has not even bothered to try. But Angell is a businessman, not a public policy do-gooder; he intends to make a buck. In fact, he's estimating revenue of $3 million in the first year alone. A subscription to his service costs $1,000 to $15,000 a year - hardly a for-the-people price. Naturally, his first two dozen customers are lobbyists, corporations, and media organizations. The average political junkie is still locked out. Angell's venture underscores a profound failure of Congress. Why is it that the powers that be on Capitol Hill - the people who write our laws and who make up what is supposed to be the federal government's most accessible arm - have not enthusiastically embraced the Internet and put their day-to-day work online? Angell created a relatively simple operation using off-the-shelf tools and a modest budget. He drew on existing voice-rec technology - Lernout & Hauspie's Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional software. He raised about $850,000 in seed money - a tiny sum compared with congressional appropriations. And he easily obtained permission to wire Senate and House committee rooms with audio feed lines. None of this was beyond Congress' means, but all of it was light-years beyond its imagination. Newt Gingrich vowed to unlock "the entire flow of information," for free. Six years later, it's yours - for $1,000 to $15,000 a year. "Congress could do this if it wanted, and there is nothing standing in the way," says Angell, who could be put out of business tomorrow if legislators flip the right switches. But that is unlikely to happen, despite the fact that Congress promised to get wired six years ago. Days after the Republicans snatched control of the House of Representatives in 1994, Newt Gingrich, the speaker-to-be, declared he would push Congress into the information age. Gingrich saw himself as a revolutionary poised to remake the government and renew American society. He pledged to create a system that would allow the entire country to have electronic access to congressional documents. With typically melodramatic flair, he promised to change "the entire flow of information and the entire quality of knowledge in the country." There was certainly room for improvement on the Hill. At the time, only a few congressional documents - such as the daily Congressional Record and the original text of selected bills - were available online. Gingrich knew that Congress could do much more. Announcing that he would recruit futurist Alvin Toffler and various high tech firms, he vowed that "we will change the rules of the House to require that all documents ...be filed electronically ... so that information is available to every citizen in the country at the same moment it is available to the highest-paid Washington lobbyist." It was a fresh and forward-looking plan. Unfortunately, it didn't go very far. Lobbyists still have better access than any plugged-in commoner. Members of Congress, who in '94 were amazingly un-wired as a group, have learned to make use of the Net, but mostly in the interest of campaigning, managing PR, or scoring partisan political points. Everyone remembers how quickly the House Judiciary Committee posted Kenneth Starr's salacious report on the Monica Lewinsky mess and other impeachment-related documents, many of which embarrassed Bill Clinton. And every member of Congress now has a self-glorifying Web site. Even so, much of Congress' basic work cannot be accessed on the Net. And these days, there is little rah-rah talk on the Hill about changing that. For several years, public-access advocates have been grumbling about this unfulfilled promise. Leading the pack is Gary Ruskin, the 35-year-old director of the Congressional Accountability Project, an organization founded by Ralph Nader. Sitting in his dark Dupont Circle office beneath soot-stained windows and tall, unsteady stacks of old newspapers and books, Ruskin ticks off a list of vital information that Congress has failed to post on the Web. A top item: working drafts of legislation, the new versions of bills that emerge as they crawl through subcommittees and committees. You won't find these updates posted on Thomas, the main congressional Web site (thomas.loc.gov). This material is often available in hard copy to the lobbyists who prowl the halls of Congress. But these working versions are rarely obtainable in electronic form. No committee chair has made this a priority, so if you're unable to visit Capitol Hill and find a cooperative aide, you're out of luck. "I have yet to meet a member of Congress who supports placing this stuff online," Ruskin says. "There are reasons members might want to keep bills secret or quiet sometimes. They can hope things like favors done for contributors or boondoggles or waste are not discovered easily. But there's a basic question here: How can citizens be expected to petition their Congress knowledgeably without access to the relevant legislative documents?" Thomas lacks mountains of other useful information, including Congressional Research Service reports, which are not routinely posted. The CRS, a nonpartisan, highly regarded research outfit housed in the Library of Congress, has published roughly 3,000 studies on a variety of subjects - tritium production, mastectomies, food safety, leaking underground storage tanks, global warming, and the Internet, to name a few. You can obtain a copy of an individual CRS report by submitting a written request to a congressional office - a cumbersome process - or you can buy one from a commercial service that collects this material. All of these reports could be placed online easily and affordably. Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader from South Dakota, for instance, has posted several hundred CRS reports on his Web site. The CRS reports are also available at a Congress-only intranet. But this site isn't open to the public, and Congress and the CRS have resisted calls to open it up. Congress also hasn't established a searchable database of votes. On the Thomas site, it's nearly impossible to find a lawmaker's voting record on a given issue unless you know the roll-call numbers of the relevant votes. Nor does the site list committee and subcommittee votes. (Often the most important votes occur in committee, not on the House or Senate floor.) "You can get a senator's favorite recipe on his Web site, but you can't search how he voted," Ruskin says. "None of this is rocket science. A perfectly competent 12-year-old could write this database." Congress also fails to post the financial disclosure statements of its members. These annual forms, which contain details about personal financial holdings, are available for inspection at the public information offices of the House and Senate. The Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.com), a public interest group based in Washington, scans and posts the records, but these usually don't appear until weeks after they are filed. (See "By the People, For the People," page 232.) "You can get a senator's favorite recipe on his Web site," says public-access advocate Gary Ruskin. "But you can't search how he voted." Several times a year, lobbyists are required to register with Congress and reveal what legislation they're attempting to influence. Congress doesn't post these reports either, which is too bad: They show how highpowered interests are working to shape laws. CRP inputs this information and posts it, but again months go by before it becomes available. Other basic documents, such as gift disclosures and expense reports, can be read on paper if you visit or contact the appropriate congressional office, but you won't find them online. "Why shouldn't Congress post the material as it comes in?" asks Larry Makinson, executive director of the CRP. "There's an institutional inertia that is breathtaking to behold." Public interest groups are pressuring politicians to release information electronically in a timely manner. Two years ago, the DC-based groups Center for Democracy and Technology and OMB Watch issued a 10 Most Wanted list of government documents that should be on the Web but aren't. The list targeted several congressional items - CRS reports, hearing transcripts, and a searchable database of votes. Librarians and researchers are also pressing for more e-access. "Hearing transcripts, which include prepared testimony and various attachments, are one of the most heavily used federal documents," says Lynne Bradley, director of the office of government relations at the American Library Association in DC. "It's outrageous they're not all electronically available." Few in Congress share the outrage. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, have introduced bipartisan legislation that would place CRS reports online and compel the Senate to post lobbyist records and senators' travel and expense records. A broad coalition supported the bill when it was put in the hopper in February 1999, including Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Association of Manufacturers, IBM, America Online, Netscape, and Intel. But the legislation has stalled in the Senate Rules Committee. "It just sits there," says McCain. In the House, Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, and David Price, a Democrat from North Carolina, have introduced legislation to post CRS reports. This measure too is going nowhere fast. Congress is not the only government body slow to adapt to the Net. The 10 Most Wanted list also included the State Department's daily briefing book, the EPA's pesticide safety database, legal briefs from the Justice Department, and the opinions of federal district and appeals courts. (Most appeals courts make opinions available electronically, though not always on their own Web sites. Most federal district courts do not. Federal law requires courts to make opinions publicly available, but it does not dictate the means by which they do so. In other words, paper is fine.) Three of the items from the 1998 list have become electronically available in the past two years: Supreme Court decisions; PTO Today, the official gazette of the US Patent and Trademark Office; and the Department of Interior's endangered-species recovery plans. The stuffy, tradition-bound Supreme Court unveiled a Web site in April. (The Supreme Court of Mongolia had a site up before the US Supreme Court.) In another case of judicial inertia, the Committee on Financial Disclosures - which manages the federal courts - last year tried to block the Web site APBnews.com from posting the financial disclosure reports filed by all 1,600 federal judges, claiming this would violate the privacy of judges and create security risks for the bench-tenders. These are public documents, so it should have been a no-brainer, but APBnews endured several months of legal wrangling before it won the fight. Not all the news is bad: A few of the 20,000-plus government Web sites have made real progress in capturing the potential of IT, and the Clinton administration came on strong in its waning months. Ari Schwartz, a policy analyst for CDT, applauds the EPA for posting its Toxics Release Inventory database (www.epa.gov/tri), which visitors can use to determine whether toxic chemicals are being used, transported, or released in their area. He also commends the State Department for quickly putting up the transcripts and audio feeds of its daily briefings (secretary.state.gov/www/briefings), which are carefully read around the world by journalists, government officials, and others who monitor every hiccup in US foreign policy. The House Science Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee occasionally webcast their hearings, and other congressional committees seem ready to follow suit. The Federal Elections Commission maintains an easy-to-use site (www.fec.gov) that supplies extensive information on where politicians get their campaign funds. On the 2000 campaign trail, Al Gore talked about doing a lot more, calling for the creation of a new "e-government" that would place nearly every federal government service online by 2003. Gore noted that citizens should be able to check their Social Security benefits, look up the status of a student loan, and investigate the purity of their local drinking water on the Net. Gore's running mate, Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Fred Thompson, a Republican from Tennessee, have pushed a similar e-government initiative in the Senate. Earlier this year, the Clinton White House spent $600,000 over seven months to redesign its Web site (www.whitehouse.gov). The site allows citizens to obtain much of the material (speeches, press briefings, reports, fact sheets) that the White House churns out. It also lets you reserve a campsite in a national forest, file a consumer fraud complaint, review crash results for new automobiles, and apply for financial aid for college. When the redesign was made public, President Clinton announced that a team led by Eric Brewer - cofounder and chief scientist at Inktomi - was busy creating a one-stop site (www.firstgov.gov) for searching all of the federal government documents available online. The impressive goal, which is supposed to be reached sometime this fall, is a site that could handle at least 100 million daily searches, looking through half a billion documents in less than one-quarter of a second. None of these changes will necessarily compel congressional slowpokes to get with the program. Not to mention the fact that if Congress doesn't digitize its own information, its documents will remain beyond the reach of any one-stop government site. FirstGov, the elections commission's site, and the proposals for e-government vividly demonstrate that Congress lags far behind the other branches of government. These efforts underscore that the obstacles to an e-Congress are not technical ones. They are not cost-driven. It's a matter of will, which is precisely what Congress seems to lack. The obstacles are not price-driven, or technical. FirstGov promises to search half a billion documents in less than a quarter of a second. After Gingrich sounded off in 1994, he assigned the task of Netifying Congress to Republican representatives Bill Thomas, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee from California, and Vernon Ehlers, a physicist who helped get the Michigan legislature online when he served there in the '80s and early '90s. Ehlers moved quickly. By the time Gingrich assumed the speakership in early 1995, Ehlers saw to it that all new bills, committee reports related to these bills, scheduling information, and the US Code (the massive compendium of federal laws) were obtainable free online. Ehlers also oversaw a two-year project to centralize and modernize the House computer system. At the same time, the Library of Congress continued to develop Thomas as a consumer-oriented gateway to the House and Senate computer systems. "Never before in history has the public had such opportunity to be knowledgeable about public officials," Ehlers boasts now. Gingrich, too, is proud of his effort to computerize Congress, though he concedes it did not proceed as far as it could have. "We moved a fair distance," he says, "but then got bogged down in the act of governing." So how much longer before everything printed is also available online? Don't hold your breath, he counsels. Gingrich believes Congress needs a high-powered task force to fully prod the body into the information age, and that will take some young members making a fuss. Yet the former Speaker still revs up quickly, envisioning a "congressional information service" that brings all the "real-time activities and archived activities" into people's homes via the Internet. "It could be the most profound change since Jefferson sold his library to Congress," he says. "Yet nobody is building that sort of architecture. And no one is introducing legislation to make it happen." Ehlers gets defensive when challenged on this front. "We've put millions of pages up," he says. "Those complaining are not giving an accurate view of what is available proportionately." How about working drafts of legislation? "Well, that's a tough problem," he says. "I don't know if it's of any comfort to the public, but frequently we don't have written copies of bills. Most bills go through constant change and are kept in a staffer's desk until the final session." (To this, the Congressional Accountability Project's Ruskin counters that lobbyists on the Hill often are able to find printed versions of bills as the legislation proceeds.) As for committee hearings, Ehlers says that it's the committee chairs who determine what happens to the transcripts. "Chairmen can decide whether or not to devote staff" to digitizing and posting transcripts, he says. They rarely do. Lobbyist disclosure reports? "I know of no policy that would prevent their posting," Ehlers says. True, but there's no policy that leads to their posting, either. CRS reports? Some are, Ehlers asserts, the property of the senators and representatives who order them. It's up to these lawmakers to decide whether they should be released. So automatic posting of those is out of the question. (Ehlers, though, has proposed a compromise that would result in a limited number of CRS reports being made electronically available.) And what about a searchable database of voting records? "Sure, there could be such a thing. But it's a question of resources. As one of our members put it to me, the problem is that the media is lazy and wants us to do their work for them. To what extent do we have a responsibility to collate information and do databases, when we provide the raw data? It would be a lot of work to organize. So many votes are hard to explain." The two committees responsible for managing Congress - the House Committee on Administration and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee - share this attitude. Asked whether Congress is lagging, Jason Poblete, the press secretary of the House committee, blasts the detractors: "There are constant critics of the House, and they can find stuff to criticize, but they take no note that half the stuff online was not online four years ago." Confronted with specifics about the still-sizable gaps, Poblete concedes that not all committees have moved to post hearing transcripts and working drafts of legislation. "We will look into that at some point," he says. Tamara Somerville, staff director of the Senate Rules committee, also quickly shifts the blame to committee chairs: "The committees all operate separately. I don't know what they're doing." In other words, the rules committee is not concerned with the lack of action. In a plea for sympathy, Somerville notes that Congress has trouble competing with the private sector when it comes to finding and retaining computer specialists. "It took us one year to hire an information technology person for our own committee Web page," she says with a sigh. Regarding the posting of lobbyist reports, Somerville says, "I can't recall that ever being discussed. We deal with so much every day. We're just so busy." Clearly, making Congress as compatible as possible with the Internet is not at the top of anyone's to-do list. It's barely a topic of conversation. The Gingrich promise has been broken. What could be behind the general reluctance of Congress to place all of its public material within keyboard reach of citizens across the country? Could it be that members of Congress want to control information about themselves and don't want to be scrutinized? "Exactly!" Senator McCain confirms. "All the information we have about what we do should be on the Web. I don't understand the opposition entirely myself. Part of it is an institutional bias. Part is business-as-usual thinking. I have a few allies, but most senators don't pay a lot of attention to this." Could it be that members of Congress want to control information about themselves and don't want to be scrutinized? "Exactly!" says McCain. Ultimately, the reason for Congress' slow walk is not difficult to fathom: The people running the place are not visionaries looking to change the power dynamic between politicians and citizens. As Larry Makinson of the Center for Responsive Politics says, "Newt wanted to put everything up on the Web, except what would inconvenience members of Congress." Congress should use the Internet, Ruskin argues, to "allow citizens to impact bills while they are in process." Yet Congress is not eager to arm the people with digital information. "It's low on people's radar screens," says a congressional aide sympathetic to the critics. "Talking about government documents and the Internet doesn't grab headlines like saving Social Security or going to war against Serbia. Few people here care a lot about this." Arguably, it is Congress' responsibility to exploit technological advances that boost citizen involvement in lawmaking and strengthen the bond between those who govern and those who are governed. But this congressional aide states a sad fact: "Unless there is a lot of public interest, there will not be any momentum to move things along." True, there may not be a widespread popular clamor for an e-Congress. But there was no mass movement for television access to Congress before C-Span began broadcasting congressional proceedings in 1979. Now, C-Span is considered an essential component of the media-age democracy. A commercial interest may be the driving force of an Net-accessible Congress. And HearingRoom.com's Philip Angell plans to expand his service to cover executive branch hearings, such as those conducted by the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Transportation Safety Board. Nonetheless, these agencies should post free digital versions of the hearings themselves, he says. Angell proudly notes that his dotcom, for a price, can "provide contemporaneous access to people all across the country - in thousands of cities, state and local governments, colleges, law schools, and libraries - to all who have an interest in Washington." Angell figured out how the Internet could bridge the gap between Congress and the rest of us. It's shameful that none of the leaders of Congress are thinking about how to put him out of business. David Corn (dacor@aol.com) is Washington editor of The Nation and author of the novel Deep Background. <-------article ends here-------> WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP Please ask your Members of Congress to put the most important congressional documents and materials on the Internet, including: * Texts of bills (especially the most important ones, such as committee prints, discussion drafts, chairman's marks and manager's marks); * A searchable database of congressional voting records (and committee votes), indexed by bill name, subject, title, member name, etc.; * Congressional Research Service reports and products; * Draft committee and conference reports; * Congressional hearing transcripts and written testimonies; * Lobbying disclosure reports; * Congressional expenditure reports, such as the Statements of Disbursements of the House and the Secretary of the Senate reports; and, * Transcripts of congressional committee and subcommittee mark-ups. The congressional switchboard phone is (202) 225-3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress, see . FOR MORE INFORMATION about the failure of Congress to put its most important documents on the Internet, see the Congressional Accountability Project website at . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Fri Dec 1 17:44:47 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from ns2.vpinet.net (ns2.vpinet.net [209.76.252.7]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6B6F329B0A for ; Fri, 1 Dec 2000 17:44:46 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 31488 invoked by alias); 1 Dec 2000 22:53:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO essential.org) (216.250.232.28) by envirocitizen.org with SMTP; 1 Dec 2000 22:53:19 -0000 Message-ID: <3A282896.1283F86@essential.org> Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 17:39:18 -0500 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Nader asks Congress to put database of congressional votes on the Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: distributes information about reforming the U.S. Congress List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Congressional Reform Briefings December 1, 2000 Ralph Nader and the Congressional Accountability Project sent letters today to U.S. Senate and House leaders asking them to place a searchable database of congressional votes on the Internet, so that citizens could easily read and study the voting records of their Members of Congress. The letters were sent to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Majority Leader Dick Armey, Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, Minority Whip David Bonior, Democratic Caucus Chairman Martin Frost, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles, Republican Conference Chairman Connie Mack, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Assistant Minority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Conference Chair Barbara Mikulski. Following is the text of the letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Dear Speaker Hastert: Isn't it time for Congress to harness the power of the Internet to serve democracy? The Internet is a wonder at distributing information cheaply and efficiently. The marginal cost of disseminating a document on the Internet is essentially zero. Congress ought to use the Internet to enable citizens to inform themselves about the inner workings of the federal government. But Congress is still stuck on the basics. Access to the voting records of elected officials is a cornerstone of democracy. Yet Congress still has not put on the Internet a database of congressional votes, searchable by bill name, subject, title, Member name, etc. Why not? Why the foot-dragging in this area? Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have put their roll call votes on the Internet -- but not in a searchable format. So it can take hours of painstaking, frustrating, tedious labor for constituents to compile their Members' voting records on any given subject. Why should constituents expend so much time and energy doing something that a computerized database could do in microseconds? This makes no sense at all. Congress ought to make it easy for citizens to carry out their civic duties. An online database of congressional votes would provide a major advance in the ability of citizens to track the actions of their Members of Congress. If you're proud of what you and your colleagues do in Washington, then why not make it as easy as possible for citizens to read and study these voting records on the Internet? Will you make this simple congressional reform a top priority for the 107th Congress? Sincerely, Ralph Nader Gary Ruskin Director <---------letter ends here---------> FOR MORE INFORMATION about the failure of Congress to put its most important documents and materials on the Internet, see the Congressional Accountability Project's web page at WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP Please ask your Members of Congress to put the most important congressional documents and materials on the Internet, including a searchable database of congressional voting records (and committee votes), indexed by bill name, subject, title, member name, etc. The congressional switchboard phone is (202) 225-3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress, see . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Fri Dec 22 10:11:33 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from ns2.vpinet.net (ns2.vpinet.net [209.76.252.7]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 635C829B32 for ; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:11:32 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 16993 invoked by alias); 22 Dec 2000 15:27:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO essential.org) (216.250.232.28) by envirocitizen.org with SMTP; 22 Dec 2000 15:27:01 -0000 Message-ID: <3A436ED7.D7A398DC@essential.org> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:10:15 -0500 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.congressproject.org X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Senator-elect Hillary Clinton's book deal Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: distributes information about reforming the U.S. Congress List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Congressional Reform Briefings December 22, 2000 On December 16, The New York Times and Washington Post reported that Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) had agreed to accept a gargantuan $8 million book advance from Simon & Schuster, a subsidiary of Viacom, the second largest media conglomerate in the world. Following are editorials on her book deal from two of her hometown newspapers, The New York Times and New York Daily News, as well as our letter to Mrs. Clinton. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/opinion/22FRI1.html The New York Times, December 22, 2000 Mrs. Clinton's Book Deal We are sorry to see Hillary Rodham Clinton start her Senate career by selling a memoir of her years as first lady to Simon & Schuster for a near-record advance of about $8 million. The deal may conceivably conform to the lax Senate rules on book sales, though even that is uncertain. But it would unquestionably violate the tougher, and better, House rules, and it is an affront to common sense. No lawmaker should accept a large, unearned sum from a publisher whose parent company, Viacom, is vitally interested in government policy on issues likely to come before Congress — for example, copyright or broadcasting legislation. Mrs. Clinton's staggering advance falls just below the $8.5 million received by Pope John Paul II in 1994. We wish as a matter of judgment that she had not sought an advance but had voluntarily limited her payments to royalties on actual book sales, as the House now requires of its members. That way there would be no worry that she had been given special treatment in an effort to curry political favor. The Senate will judge Mrs. Clinton's deal in the context of outmoded rules that, regrettably, still permit members to accept advance payments for their books provided they fall within "usual and customary" industry patterns. Mrs. Clinton held an open auction for her book, so the $8 million advance emerged from a process that presumably represented the industry's consensus about what the book would be worth. But Mrs. Clinton has a duty to reveal the entire contents of her contract so that the public and members of the Senate Ethics Committee can judge for themselves whether its terms fulfill her pledge to comply with existing Senate rules, inadequate though they are. As it is, Mrs. Clinton will enter the Senate as a business associate of a major company that has dealings before many regulatory agencies and interests in Congress. It would have been far better if she had avoided this entanglement. As she above all others should know, not every deal that is legally permissible is smart for a politician who wants and needs to inspire public trust. Only a few years ago Newt Gingrich, at that time the House speaker, accepted an ethically dubious $4.5 million book deal with a publishing house owned by Rupert Murdoch, an aggressively political publisher seeking help with his problems with federal regulators. This was the issue that ultimately forced Mr. Gingrich to abandon his advance, and led the House to ban all advance payments for members' books. That is the right approach, and it would be nice if Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton's deal now devoted real energy to persuading the Senate to adopt the House rules for the future. Both bodies need maximum protection against entangling alliances between lawmakers and government favor- seekers now that nearly all major publishing houses are owned by large corporations with a lot of business before Congress. New York Daily News, December 19, 2000 Hillary Starts On Wrong Page Hillary Clinton spent months vilifying Rick Lazio as an acolyte of Newt Gingrich. Well, based on her advertised opposition to the former House speaker, the outgoing First Lady and soon-to-be senator knows well that it's a bad idea for members of Congress to pocket multimillion-dollar book advances. Gingrich, you may remember, tried to take a $4.5 million advance in 1994 to write two books for media baron Rupert Murdoch, who was lobbying and seeking favors, but the political pressure became too great. The speaker dropped the advance and agreed to take just $1 up front, with standard royalties. After that searing episode, the House adopted a rule banning such advances. The Senate never did. That must change. The problem is back, with Clinton set to receive a reported $8 million advance for her White House memoirs. She did not submit the plan to the Senate Ethics Committee because, not yet sworn in, she is not under its jurisdiction. She should have, anyway. Under Senate rules, senators can accept advances "so long as such fees" are "in accordance with the usual and customary contractual terms" of book deals. Since only one other nonfiction book has ever had a greater advance — $8.5 million for the Pope — it would be a stretch to consider Clinton's fee "usual and customary." And even if her deal were to be okayed, the Senate rules are simply wrong. They should be changed to match those of the House, which recognize the potentially corrupting influence of such arrangements. Unlike Gingrich's deal, Clinton's was the result of an open auction, with the advance payout set to be made in standard installments. Clinton also has pledged to give a portion of the cash to charity. Moreover, there is no evidence that Simon & Schuster wants anything from the new senator — anything, that is, beyond making money when the book appears in 2003. That's why Clinton should wait until then to collect her earnings. If she hadn't run for the Senate, or had lost, there would be no issue. She would be a private person making a private business deal. But that's not the case, and there's a major problem with an elected official taking huge sums from a publisher before the first book is even sold. The previous record for a senator's book advance is held by Al Gore, who made $100,000 — 80 times less than Clinton will. However, his deal was approved by the Ethics Committee, which asked him whether his publisher had any matters before his committees or was personally lobbying him. Clinton should restructure her contract to forgo an advance and wait until the royalties come in. In the meantime, she can concentrate on her new day job. <------editorial ends here-----> Following is the Congressional Accountability Project's letter to Senator-elect Clinton. http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/ethics/hclintcom1.html December 18, 2000 The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton Senator-elect The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20500 RE: Submitting Your Book Contract with Simon & Schuster to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics Dear Senator-elect Clinton: This letter is a request that you submit your book contract with Simon & Schuster, and information surrounding the formation of the contract, to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ("Ethics Committee") to determine whether it violates Senate Rules regarding conflicts of interest, the sale of intellectual property, or other applicable Senate standards of conduct. By promptly submitting your contract and surrounding materials to the Ethics Committee for review, you can show your commitment to adhering strictly to Senate Rules and other Senate standards of conduct. On December 16th, The New York Times reported that you had agreed to accept an $8 million book advance in a book contract with Simon & Schuster, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc., the second largest media conglomerate in the world. According to news accounts, your $8 million book advance appears to be the largest one ever received by an elected official in the history of the world. "Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed last night to sell Simon & Schuster a memoir of her years as first lady, for the near-record advance of about $8 million." * * * * * "Mrs. Clinton's $8 million advance is just below the advance of $8.5 million received by Pope John Paul II in 1994, believed to be the largest ever for worldwide rights." * * * * * "Some publishers initially said that Mrs. Clinton sought almost all of her advance upfront, pushing to sign a contract by the end of the year. But people close to Mrs. Clinton said that she never requested the whole advance right away. Other publishers said only upfront payments up to half the total were discussed." "Such an arrangement would still be highly unusual. Multimillion-dollar advances are typically broken up into several smaller payments over the course of a book's publication. It was not clear last night what payment schedule was set." (1) A: The Ethics Committee Should Determine Whether Your Book Deal Violates Senate Standards of Conduct According to the Senate Ethics Manual, a Senator may enter into a book contract with a publisher, but the book contract's terms and execution are subject to Ethics Committee review because the Senator's income from the book may be controlled, to some extent, by the manipulations of publishers and bookstores. That leaves the Senator and the Senate vulnerable to efforts to purchase influence through the promotion of book sales. "Although the original copyrighted property was created by the individual's personal efforts, this type of income is made possible by the actions of others (such as the publisher, promoter, and bookstores), and calculated on the basis of income received by another person or entity (the publisher) as a result of the property's appeal to the purchasing public. In order to prevent abuses of this provision, the Committee has determined that such fees must be in accordance with usual and customary contractual terms governing the transfer of copyright...with established users or purchasers of those rights." (2) At this time, you have not released your book contract to the public, so the only information available about it is from news reports. According to these articles, at a minimum, your book deal appears to fail the "usual and customary" test for book contract terms because it gives you the largest book advance ever for an elected official. In that respect, it is sui generis, not usual and customary. The Ethics Committee should review other aspects of the book contract as well, such as the structure and rate of royalties, the timing of the advance payments, and the absence of a book proposal, to determine whether they, too, fall outside the bounds of usual and customary contractual terms. According to news reports, your staff asserts that you held an auction to set the fair market value for your book. To date, none of these news reports provides conclusive evidence that your book auction either was or was not fair. An auction does not guarantee that a book's price will meet -- and not exceed -- fair market value for the sale of book rights. For example, in 1994, then-House Speaker-presumptive Newt Gingrich agreed to accept a $4.5 million book advance from HarperCollins Publishers. After sustained public outrcy, he returned the advance, keeping only $1. Subsequently, news reports indicated that his auction process was not fair and open, with one publishing house calling the auction rules "murky."(3) The Ethics Committee should review your book auction process to determine whether or not it actually established the fair market value for your proposed book. B: The Ethics Committee Should Determine Whether Your Book Deal Violates Senate Conflict of Interest Rules According to news accounts, you have agreed to a book deal with Simon & Schuster, which is owned by Viacom, Inc., the second largest media company in the world. Viacom has major holdings in movies, television, radio, billboards, video stores, publishing and the Internet. According to Hoover's Company Profile Database, Viacom "produces movies through Paramount Pictures...and produces, distributes, and syndicates TV shows through Paramount Television...and CBS Enterprises...Viacom's extensive TV assets consist of the CBS and UPN (United Paramount Network) television networks and several cable TV networks, including MTV Networks (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, CMT, TNN: The National Network), Showtime Networks (Showtime, The Movie Channel, FLIX), and 50% of Comedy Central. The company also owns 16 CBS and 19 UPN TV stations. Viacom also has plans to acquire BET Holdings, the entertainment company which targets African Americans, for about $3 billion." "Viacom also owns movie theaters, theme parks, publisher Simon & Schuster, and 82% of Blockbuster (the #1 video rental chain). In addition, the company owns 64% of Infinity Broadcasting (more than 160 radio stations and the #1 outdoor advertising firm) and has agreed to buy the rest. It lords over stakes in a slew of Internet firms as well, through CBS Internet Group (MarketWatch.com, SportsLine.com) and The MTVi Group (MTV.com, VH1.com, SonicNet.com)." "Viacom's merger with CBS in 2000 was a powerhouse media deal valued at about $45 billion. The acquisition vaulted Viacom to the second-largest media firm in the world." Viacom has a vital interest in many legislative and regulatory matters pending before the U.S. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and other executive branch agencies, including antitrust and ownership restrictions on media holdings and market concentration, intellectual property and copyright protection, regulation of media violence, campaign finance reform, tobacco advertising, alcohol advertising, and the public interest duties of broadcasters, among many others.(5) Viacom spends lavishly on its efforts to influence Congress and the federal government on these issues. Between 1996-2000, Viacom spent $9,290,000 on in-house and outside lobbying expenses, according to the Center for Public Integrity. (6) Viacom is also major campaign donor. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Viacom Inc. gave $533,595 in campaign contributions during the 2000 election cycle. (7) Given Viacom's extensive efforts to affect the outcome of numerous matters pending before the Senate and federal government, if you accept the $8 million book advance from Simon & Schuster, you may violate Senate Rules regarding conflicts of interest. "No Member, officer, or employee shall engage in any outside business or professional activity or employment for compensation which is inconsistent or in conflict with the conscientious performance of official duties." (8) "A Member, officer, or employee of the Senate shall not receive any compensation, nor shall he permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt or accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position as a Member, officer, or employee." (9) The Ethics Committee should determine whether your $8 million book advance is, in fact, a violation of these conflict of interest rules. It is noteworthy, as well, that your book advance would be impermissible under the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives, which prohibit House Members from accepting any book advance. "A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House may not receive an advance payment on copyright royalties." (10) C: Conclusion The sheer size of your $8 million book advance raises questions about whether you and Senate processes may be affected by large cash payments from a major media conglomerate. This book contract, with its uniquely lavish advance for an elected official, may be, in fact, a way for that corporation to place money into your pockets, perhaps to curry favor with you. (11) We are not the only ones to express opposition to your $8 million book advance. Both Common Cause and the Center for Public Integrity have also questioned the propriety of it. (11) In addition, on December 15, Senator John McCain suggested that the Ethics Committee review your book contract. (12) We urge you to submit your book contract and surrounding materials to the Ethics Committee for review of whether they violate Senate Rules regarding conflicts of interest, the sale of intellectual property, or other Senate standards of conduct. During your campaign for the Senate, you often voiced support for campaign finance reform as a way to mitigate the corrupting influence of money in politics. As an advocate against public corruption, we urge you to walk your talk, by altering the terms of your book contract to accept only copyright royalties, under usual and customary contractual terms, for books actually sold. This would protect the Senate and the public from the possibility that a powerful corporation may be trying to obtain special favors from a Senator in exchange for a singularly lucrative book advance. Sincerely, Gary Ruskin Director cc: The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Ethics The Honorable Harry Reid, Ranking Member, Senate Select Committee on Ethics Footnotes (1) David D. Kirkpatrick, "Hillary Clinton Book Advance, at $8 Million, Is Nearly a Record." The New York Times, December 16, 2000. Linton Weeks, "Hillary Clinton Seals $8 Million Book Deal." The Washington Post, December 16, 2000. (2) Senate Ethics Manual at 127. (3) David Streitfeld, "Bidders And Losers; Several Publishers Found Gingrich's Price Too High." The Washington Post, January 13, 1995. (4) Hoover's Company Profile Database, American Public Companies, Viacom Inc., 2001. (5) See especially "Off The Record: What Media Corporations Don't Tell You About Their Legislative Agendas." The Center for Public Integrity, 2000, . See also Charles Lewis, "Media Money." Columbia Journalism Review, September-October 2000, . Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communications Politics in Dubious Times. (Urbana and Chicago, IL: Illinois University Press, 1999). (6) "Off The Record: What Media Corporations Don't Tell You About Their Legislative Agendas." The Center for Public Integrity, 2000, at 63. (7) . (8) Senate Rule 37, cl. 2. . (9) Senate Rule 37, cl. 1. . (10) House Rule 26, cl. 3(a). (11) Such questions have arisen in the past. See, for example, Lars-Erik Nelson, "Newt's Book Deal Fits A Disturbing Pattern." Denver Post, February 5, 1995. (12) NBC News Transcripts, Interview with U.S. Senator John McCain, December 15, 2000. Richard Sisk and Paul D. Colford, "McCain: Read Fine Print on Hil's $8m Book Deal." New York Daily News, December 16, 2000. <----letter ends here---> The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. For more information on our work, see our web page at . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.congressproject.org | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@venice.essential.org Thu Feb 15 11:51:27 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Received: from milan.essential.org (milan.essential.org [216.0.124.12]) by venice.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F53B29B08 for ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 11:51:27 -0500 (EST) Received: from essential.org (ppp-8.essential.org [216.0.125.8]) by milan.essential.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA02543; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 11:51:24 -0500 Message-ID: <3A8C090A.EE742D1A@essential.org> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 11:51:22 -0500 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.congressproject.org X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@venice.essential.org Subject: support Senate measure to put key congressional documents on the Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: distributes information about reforming the U.S. Congress List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Congressional Reform Briefings February 15, 2001 -- Support Senate measure to put key congressional documents on the Internet. U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Pat Leahy (D-VT) introduced a Senate resolution yesterday to place important congressional documents on the Internet, including Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue Briefs, CRS Authorization and Appropriations products, lobbyist disclosure reports and Senate gift disclosure reports. The resolution (S. Res. 21) is co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT). CRS reports are among the best research done by the federal government. The McCain-Leahy resolution would put about 2700 CRS reports on the Internet. In an notable affront to citizens and taxpayers, these reports are available to Members of Congress and their staff on an internal congressional intranet -- which is closed to the public -- even though the taxpayers will spend $73.4 million to fund CRS operations during fiscal year 2001. To read abstracts of CRS reports, see the Pennyhill Press website which sells the reports to the public for $49 for up to five reports. The House of Representatives recently initiated a pilot project to place some CRS reports on the Internet. Several hundred CRS reports are now available on the website of Representative Chris Shays (R-CT), at . The resolution would put lobbyist disclosure reports on the Internet, which could help citizens to track patterns of influence in Congress, and to discover who is paying whom how much to lobby on what issues. In another affront to citizens and taxpayers, these reports are computerized, but are made available to the public on Capitol Hill, not on the Internet. "Citizens need easy access to these documents to discharge their civic duties," said Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project. "Taxpayers deserve ready access to the documents they pay to create." The resolution is endorsed by the Alliance for Democracy, American Association of Law Libraries, American Conservative Union, American Library Association, American Federation of Government Employees, American Society of Newspaper Editors, AOL Time-Warner, Better Government Association, Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for Media Education, Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Congressional Accountability Project, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Federation of American Scientists, Friends of the Earth, Government Accountability Project, Intel Co., National Federation of Press Women, National Newspaper Association, National Security Archive, National Taxpayers Union, OMB Watch, Progressive Asset Management Inc., Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen, RealNetworks Inc., Reform Party of the USA, Regional Reporters Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Society of Professional Journalists, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG). Congress has yet to put its most important documents on the Internet, including: * A searchable database of congressional voting records, indexed by bill name, subject, title, Member name, etc.; * Key texts of bills (especially committee prints, discussion drafts, chairman's marks and manager's marks); * All Congressional Research Service reports and products; * Draft committee and conference reports; * Lobbying disclosure reports; * Committee and subcommittee mark-up transcripts; * All congressional hearing transcripts and written testimonies; and, * Congressional expenditure reports, such as the Statements of Disbursements of the House and the Secretary of the Senate reports. "Congress has been shamefully slow to put its most important documents on the Internet," Ruskin said. "The McCain-Leahy resolution is a good step towards placing the work product of Congress on the Internet." In 1822, James Madison explained why citizens must have government information: "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." The measure contains a Sense of the Senate resolution that Senate and Joint Committees should "provide access via the Internet to publicly-available committee information, documents and proceedings, including bills, reports and transcripts of committee meetings that are open to the public." FOR MORE INFORMATION about the failure of Congress to put its documents on the Internet, see the Congressional Accountability Project's website at . WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP Please ask your U.S. Senators to co-sponsor S. Res. 21. The congressional switchboard phone number is (202) 225-3121. To find out who your Members of Congress are, as well as their phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses, see . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress. Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Ruskin | Congressional Accountability Project 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009 Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406 http://www.congressproject.org | mailto:gary@essential.org | -------------------------------------------------------------- From owner-cong-reform@lists.essential.org Wed Dec 5 09:49:38 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Received: from smtp6.mindspring.com (smtp6.mindspring.com [207.69.200.110]) by lists.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6800B29B70 for ; Wed, 5 Dec 2001 09:49:38 -0500 (EST) Received: from apx1-03-129.pdx.du.teleport.com ([216.26.62.129] helo=essential.org) by smtp6.mindspring.com with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16BdMe-0008JB-00 for cong-reform@lists.essential.org; Wed, 05 Dec 2001 09:49:37 -0500 Message-ID: <3C0E33EC.DBE87471@essential.org> Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2001 06:49:16 -0800 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.congressproject.org X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Stop the proposed $4,900 congressional pay raise Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: distributes information about reforming the U.S. Congress List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Congressional Reform Briefings December 5, 2001 Opponents of the proposed $4,900 congressional pay raise sent letters today to all U.S. Senators urging them to support an amendment by Senator Russell Feingold to stop the pay raise. The letter follows. Dear Senator: Without any public hearings or a single vote in the House or Senate, Members of Congress have contrived to grant themselves a proposed $4,900 pay raise, boosting the base congressional salary to a very generous $150,000 per year, plus health insurance, pension, perks and other benefits. We urge you to stop this raise; there is no need for it. At present, Members of Congress are lavishly compensated with a princely salary and emoluments that are multiples more than the median individual income. In recent years, Members of Congress have kept their salaries well ahead of inflation. In 1989, the base congressional salary was $89,500. Since then, senators have given themselves eight pay raises. The current base congressional salary is more than $13,000 above 1989 levels, adjusted for inflation. There is no lack of top-quality candidates willing to serve in Congress for the current salary. Members of Congress are wrong to hike their salaries while our nation's economy is deteriorating. Our country is now in recession, unemployment is rising, and our federal government's fiscal status has dramatically worsened. The federal budget deficit may rise to $50 billion next year, on top of the $5.8 trillion federal debt. Last week, the White House Budget Director predicted that the federal government would be mired in deficits until at least fiscal year 2005. This proposed pay raise offends against the plain meaning of the 27th Amendment, which states that "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." Our country may yet face more hardships and tragedies like those of September 11. During this time of trial, our country needs its Members of Congress to preserve and strengthen their moral authority to govern -- not squander it on an effort most taxpayers would find objectionable even in ordinary times. This week, Sen. Russ Feingold will likely offer an amendment to block the proposed $4,900 congressional pay grab. This amendment is a test of Congress's willingness to lead by example. We ask you to ensure that this amendment receives a vote, and to support it. Sincerely, Ralph Nader Gary Ruskin, Director, Congressional Accountability Project Pete Sepp, Vice President for Communications, National Taxpayers Union Paul M. Weyrich, CEO and Founder, Free Congress Foundation Joe Theissen, Executive Director, Taxpayers for Common Sense Thomas A. Schatz, President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste Stacie Rumenap, Executive Director, U.S. Term Limits Gerald Moan, Chairman, Reform Party of the USA Steve Dasbach, Executive Director, Libertarian Party David Repko, Chair, pro tem, National Committee of The American Reform Party <---------letter ends here----------> WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP: Please contact your senators to support the Feingold amendment to stop the proposed congressional pay raise. The congressional switchboard phone is (202) 225-3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of your senators, see . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress, and promotes congressional reform. For more information, see our website at: . Congressional Reform Briefings are distributed electronically via the cong-reform mailing list . To subscribe to the cong-reform mailing list, go to or send the word "subscribe" to . PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY -- Gary Ruskin | gary@essential.org Commercial Alert | http://www.commercialalert.org Congressional Accountability Project | http://www.congressproject.org phone: 503.235.8012 | fax: 503.235.5073 From owner-cong-reform@lists.essential.org Wed Aug 14 13:03:09 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Received: from pdxpo.dsl-only.net (pdxpo.dsl-only.net [63.105.16.3]) by lists.essential.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 609E929B0F for ; Wed, 14 Aug 2002 13:03:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from congressproject.org (unverified [63.105.22.78]) by dsl-only.net (Rockliffe SMTPRA 5.2.4) with ESMTP id for ; Wed, 14 Aug 2002 09:55:48 -0700 Message-ID: <3D5A8C9E.387EBF10@congressproject.org> Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 10:00:14 -0700 From: Gary Ruskin Organization: http://www.congressproject.org X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Subject: Stop the $5,000 Congressional Pay Raise Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org Errors-To: cong-reform-admin@lists.essential.org X-BeenThere: cong-reform@lists.essential.org Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: distributes information about reforming the U.S. Congress List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Congressional Reform Briefings August 14, 2002 Opponents of the proposed $5,000 congressional pay raise sent letters today to all U.S. Senators urging them to reject the raise. The letter follows. Dear Senator: We write to ask you to oppose the proposed $5,000 congressional pay raise, which would boost the congressional compensation package from $150,000 to $155,000, plus generous perks, pension and health benefits. Members of Congress are already overpaid. Including the new proposed raise, Members of Congress will earn nearly four times the median income of full-time, year-round American male workers, excluding benefits and perks. In 1989, Members of Congress earned $89,500 per year. Since then, they have already granted themselves $60,500 in raises. Over the past five years, Members of Congress have given themselves $13,300 per year in raises, which is more than a minimum wage employee would earn during an entire year of full-time work. But this is an especially improper time for yet another congressional pay grab. The federal budget deficit has exploded. The Office of Management and Budget predicts that the federal deficit will be $165 billion this year. Still worse, the federal public debt has ballooned to $6.2 trillion. Our country is so deep in debt that we cannot and should not afford a congressional pay raise. Our economy is sagging. The recent stock market drop has cut the retirement savings of millions of Americans. And the federal government's official unemployment rate has risen from 4.9% a year ago to 5.9% last month. There is no shortage of highly qualified candidates willing to run for Congress at the current salary. If Senators wish to earn more, they may do so in the private sector. At the very least, the Senate should hold hearings on the proposed raise, and permit a roll call vote on an amendment to reject it. But this is no time for another congressional pay grab. We ask you to preserve your moral authority to govern by doing everything in your power to stop it. Sincerely, Ralph Nader Gary Ruskin, Director, Congressional Accountability Project Pete Sepp, Vice President for Communications, National Taxpayers Union Paul M. Weyrich, President, Free Congress Foundation Jill Lancelot, President and Co-Founder, Taxpayers for Common Sense Dave Williams, Vice President of Policy, Citizens Against Government Waste Stacie Rumenap, Executive Director, U.S. Term Limits Ben Manski, Co-Chair, Green Party of the United States Steve Dasbach, Executive Director, Libertarian Party Gerald Moan, Chairman, Reform Party of the USA <-----letter ends here-----> WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP: 1) Please call your U.S. Senators and ask them to oppose the proposed $5,000 congressional pay raise. The congressional switchboard phone is 202.225.3121. To find the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of your senators, see . FOR MORE INFORMATION: about congressional pay and perks, and the proposed congressional pay raise, see the Congressional Accountability Project website at or the National Taxpayers Union website at . The Congressional Accountability Project opposes corruption in the U.S. Congress, and promotes congressional reform. For more information, see our w