House Appropriators May Limit Public Availability of Pending Bills

Attila Dimedici writes "The House Appropriations Committee is considering a draft report that would forbid the Library of Congress to allow bulk downloads of bills pending before Congress. The Library of Congress currently has an online database called THOMAS (for Thomas Jefferson) that allows people to look up bills pending before Congress. The problem is that THOMAS is somewhat clunky and it is difficult to extract data from it. This draft report would forbid the Library of Congress from modernizing THOMAS until a task force reports back. I am pretty sure that the majority of people on Slashdot agree that being able to better understand how the various bills being considered by Congress interact would be good for this country."

Re:Seems like a problem that could be fixed...

[buchner.johannes]

THOMAS may only allow 1 bill at a time, but there are only so many bills before Congress. Download them one at a time and make an external database. Host that site yourself.

It would be nice to see a git-tree of legislations (revision history, diffs, who wrote what line when). I'm not expecting governments to do that, but it might be insightful and interesting.

Re:Obviously

[hrvatska]

"Deem and Pass" Is Not "Without a Vote", and both parties use it. The Republicans used it to pass a budget bill in the House recently. The Dems used it in the House for healthcare legislation. The Republicans used it to pass the Bush tax cuts. There are plenty of examples of both parties using it. Both sides cry about the other side using this technique, but they both use it when it's to their advantage.

Re:Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

It's purely a matter of saying it bluntly instead of trying to say it cleverly.

You can't say, "You MUST pay $640 to buy health insurance"-- unconstitutional.

But...

You can say, "You MUST give the federal government $640 per year in taxes. The Federal government will provide you health care. There will be tax exemptions for people whose income is low". -- constitutional