All Requested Legislative Branch Documents
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505Votes
CRS Reports
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) uses taxpayer dollars to produce excellent reports on public policy issues ranging from foreign affairs to agriculture to health care. These reports are posted online, but on an internal system available only to Congressional offices through a password. Citizens can ask for these reports through their member of Congress, but they must know that the report exists. Currently, reports are sold by third parties or made available, when possible, by advocacy groups and others. Congress should make CRS release these reports to the public proactively and directly.
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247Votes
Exhaustive List of Congressional Members Votes
Voting records are public information and yet countless members of Congress continue to make efforts to prevent the creation of a government sponsored website. Numerous effective third-party websites exist, but in the interest of full disclosure and open government, an official Congressional sponsored website is vital.
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44Votes
GAO legislative histories (1915 - present)
The digitization of this rich historical chunk of GAO information (20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995!!) has been contacted out to Thomson-West -- who will have exclusive license to the data. For more background on this goldmine of govt information, see http://freegovinfo.info/taxonomy/term/488
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14Votes
Unprinted Hearings
Not every Congressional hearing that's held is printed. The U.S. Senate Bibliographies (compiled at NCSU Libraries) lists unprinted Senate hearings from the 103rd-108th Congresses (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/congbibs/senate/index.html). If hearings are not printed - that is, published in print and disseminated to depository libraries OR published on GPO Access/FDsys - U.S. citizens are denied the right to understand this crucial aspect of the legislative process.
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13Votes
Senate Electronic Campaign Finance Disclosure Reports
The Senate is still using a hard copy system for filing campaign finance reports. As a result of paper filing, final disclosure reports of senatorial candidates only become available to the voting public after elections because of the processing time needed by Federal Election Commission. Currently, general practices of almost ever major campaign already have the information stored electronically, so moving the information over to the FEC would not be difficult. The 110th Senate was the first to let legislation on the topic get out of committee, but it has not been brought up yet in the 111th. For more information, also visit http://www.cfinst.org/disclosure/#senate "The Senate Campaign Disparity Act (S. 223) would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically. It was introduced in this session on January 9th by Senators Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Cochran (R-MN) and a broadly bipartisan group of co-sponsors who now number more than thirty."
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12Votes
A "Roll the Credits" Annotation of Lawmaking and Rulemaking
A paternity/maternity log annotating the name, title and organization of all individuals—Congressional members, regulatory officials, staff and lobbyists or others — contributing to the addition, amendment or deletion of every provision in the text of every bill or proposed rule, at the time of that addition, amendment or deletion. While there is no single record of this kind in existence, the information is recorded in scattered (and so far confidential) documents easily identified. (Despite the forced choice in "Branch of Government" above, this would apply to both Congress and the rulemaking agencies of the Executive Branch)
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12Votes
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10Votes
Daily Schedules of Members of Congress
I want to know what our elected representatives are doing with their time and our money? Are they meeting with lobbyists or constituents? The House and the Senate should require members to post daily schedules on their official websites.
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10Votes
GAO Legislative History documents
Government Accounting Office has compiled legislative histories since the early 1900s which they have since sold to a third party to publish on its website (see http://west.thomson.com/westlaw/statutes/gao-history.aspx). Since taxpayers originally paid for this information, it would be helpful to get it directly (both historic and current!) from the GAO directly.
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9Votes
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9Votes
summaries of budgets and actual spending
federal, states, counties, and cities.
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9Votes
Current Contractor Projects
The number of full time employees (FTE) are regularly reported to Congress, but agencies rarely make public the number of contractors that are working for them. Many agencies have contractors now working in place of FTEs inside each agency. A full accounting of these contractors would give a more realistic estimate of the size and more information to help understand the effectiveness of government.
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7Votes
Cost accounting for Congressional trips
Every year, Senators and Congressional representatives take hundreds of trips overseas, and send their staff on many more. These trips serve valuable goals - understanding more about the foreign affairs matters covered in legislation, making contacts and engaging in discussion about foreign policy, etc. The trips also cost tremendous amounts of money, with delegations often traveling on U.S. military aircraft or in commercial business class and U.S. Embassies and Consulates overseas dedicating dozens of staff to scheduling meetings, making hotel reservations, arranging tourist outings for delegation members or their accompanying spouses, and writing reports on the visit. The final accounting for these trips should be published, including a brief description of the purpose of the trip, a list of the travelers, and an explanation of which office covered the bill (a representative's own budget, committee budget, etc).
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6Votes
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6Votes
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6Votes
Chairman's Marks on Legislation
The changes the chair of each committee (House and Senate) makes before other committee members vote on bills show be publicly available. Mark-ups have drastically changed legislation in the past, and continue to be all too secretive to this day. Why is it such a secret? If my congresswoman writes a bill, I want to see the changes it goes through before it becomes a law.
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5Votes
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5Votes
All Earmark Requests
Each member makes many more requets for earmarks than are granted every fiscal year. Taxpayers should be made aware of all of those requests, not just those that are funded.
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5Votes
Administrative Records of Congress
Congress spends billions annually to run its offices, committees, etc. We should have easy access to this material.
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5Votes
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4Votes
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4Votes
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4Votes
Campaign contributions
who does our elected officals receive campaign contributions from
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4Votes
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3Votes
Annual payments to Congress Members
Payments to members per annum
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2Votes
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2Votes
Cost of House of Representatives
Total payments to members of House
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2Votes
Economic Stimulus
Details of the package
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1Votes
Blogojevich and Burris communications
What are the relations between these guys?
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1Votes
funds provided to members of congress for election
I would like to know who provides funds for the election of members of congress
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0Votes