Late last week the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission shared his view that it was critical for the Federal Government to start regulating the Internet. Hey, we’ve got an idea: Before the Feds start regulating the Internet, why not start using it?
Why not, for instance, try to crack the problem of posting the text of major legislation on-line for 72 hours before debate, so that all Members of Congress and informed Americans can see for themselves what is being considered?
We’re pretty sure that when our country was founded over 200 years ago, our representatives had a copy of the bill in their hands before they had to vote on it. Yet today, in the era of the Internet, mobile broadband and thumb drives, we’re told that this is impossible, unnecessary, or undesirable.
Just yesterday, in the Senate Finance Committee, an amendment was proposed to require that the health care legislation, along with a cost estimate, be made public electronically before committee members were required to vote.
Surprisingly, the Committee rejected the idea. Senator Kerry argued that most people don’t read the legislation anyway because it is too technical and legalistic.
Senator Kerry’s argument is as easily dismissed as it is insulting to the American public. But it’s also not a technically difficult problem, either, even for complex legislation. There’s plenty of off-the-shelf software out there that allows immediate publishing of complex documents to the web, with versioning control, security, and full text search. In fact, we don’t see why legislation today isn’t distributed to Members on thumb drives. It would be greener, too.
Another argument is that there just isn’t time to make the language available to the public. After all, it’s critical that the health care bill be moved without delay. But we can’t help but notice that, while American troops are risking their lives in Afghanistan, President Obama says he won’t rush a decision on a request for more troops from America’s top general in the field.
There’s plenty of time for the President to call a “timeout” in making a decision on troop levels in Afghanistan, but we don’t have three days to post the language of a health care bill on-line so people can read it?
Early this year IPI joined with the Sunlight Foundation in a project called “Read the Bill” found at www.ReadTheBill.org. The premise is simple—Congress should post all non-emergency bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. That way all of the Congress, not to mention the American people, can consider the actual legislation under consideration.