Tweet
Remember the ethics campaign promises in Obama & Biden’s Plan to Change Washington? This is from their campaign’s webpage on ethics reform:
The Problem
Lobbyists Write National Policies: For example, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force of oil and gas lobbyists met secretly to develop national energy policy.
Secrecy Dominates Government Actions: The Bush administration has ignored public disclosure rules and has invoked a legal tool known as the "state secrets" privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.
Wasteful Spending is Out of Control: The current administration has abused its power by handing out contracts without competition to its politically connected friends and supporters. These abuses cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year.
From the main section, "Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan," here is one of their campaign promises (my bold):
Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.
From the Sunlight Foundation on Jan 29th (please see post for comments and links) – White House Breaks Transparency Promise:
In a blog post announcing the President’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first piece of legislation he has signed, we are informed that the bill has been posted on the White House web site and is now open for comment… after the President signed it.
For quite some time President Obama has promised that all non-emergency legislation will be open for public comment on Whitehouse.gov for 5 days before the President signs it. I am not sure what constitutes “emergency” legislation; providing emergency appropriations in response to a disaster or attack would apply. This was supposed to be a major element to the President’s transparency efforts, even though the effect of it can be disputed (the bill has already passed and can’t be changed). A blog post from the White House on January 20th say this:
One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
It is too bad they let this transparency promise slip on the very first piece of legislation that hit the President’s desk. After a few transparency wins for the administration, it looks like they’ve hit their first fail.
Postings on the openhouse listserv have been flying. I’ve seen nothing like it with open government activists. This is a very big deal and the only reason I haven’t commented on it before is that I’ve been desperately hoping to see an Obama supporter address it. I thought that if an Obama critic (like me) posted on it might not be taken seriously. But it’s been almost a week and no such luck, so here it is… because there is no such thing as transparency in government without an engaged citizenry to hold government accountable.
17 Comments
Thanks, selise. It is truly disappointing that a piece of legislation that is such a significant victory on one front (women’s employment rights) would be such a failure on Obama’s transparency promise. Like you, I fail to see how this bill falls into the “emergency” category. Do you know if the bill is significantly different from the version that failed in the previous Congress? If it is identical, that would about the only wiggle room I see for Obama.
not much wiggle room though because the promise is not just that the bill will be posted somewhere to read – it’s that the whitehouse will provide a platform for both reading and public comment on the bill before it is signed.
i agree that it’s disappointing – for this bill and for the first bill that obama signs. but if we don’t push back and demand transparency on bills we like, how can we legitimately and without hypocrisy push back on bills we don’t like?
You’re absolutely right on missing the chance for public input. That is indeed a failure on the very first try.
imo it will be far more important to get bills posted for reading and public comment prior to mark up in committee and prior to house and senate votes – but this one is so easy and completely within the administration’s control that i think it makes a good first step. the problem is, imo, if we don’t fight this failure now and demand the 5 days for public comment there will be no motivation for implementation of the next steps.
this one matters for far more than it’s own sake and i hate to see us ignore it..
I agree it would be more important to see the bills in advance while they are still working their way through Congress. Thomas the government archive doesn’t have this material up in a timely fashion and is often very difficult to search later for it.
There is also the practice where details of bills, their text, as well as government reports are released first to the traditional media and only later to the public. In the age of the internet, this is unacceptable. What it allows is government and media to have the first chances to spin them. If they are released directly to the internet, then the media can still use its resources and connections to get a story out on them but it won’t have a monopoly on this. And new media sources, the net, the netroots can deploy their resources too in a timely fashion.
The reason it is not done this way is inertia but also that this way government and media continue to exercise primary ownership of the message.
agree completely. would just add that by very cleverly releasing some select info to bloggers and other new media, imo government officials have been able to defuse much of the pressure for global release via the internet.
I agree with you all on the need to get this stuff up on Thomas promptly, and didn’t realize there was a problem there. While I think the public comment period prior to signing is a good idea, it shouldn’t be viewed as a substitute for public involvement via congress. Our [public] input into bills and other issues traditionally comes through our House reps. Constitutionally, that is the more important time for input. Meaningful public review of bills is unlikely (but not impossible) once they are out of the Congress and ready for signing.
I’m not saying Obama’s mechanism is bad, simply that it should not be viewed as substitute for public input while the sausage is being ground.
Even more importantly, bills are supposed to be written in Congress, not handed to them by the Executive or by lobbyists in nearly final form. That’s the real problem here. If mark-up sessions were real, actual language and policy would be debated on its merits.
i don’t think anyone see this as a substitute for public input during the process – rather a kind of feed back. but more importantly, to my thinking anyway, a very easy and small step in the direction of greater transparency. as i wrote above, this one matters for far more than it’s own sake.
UPDATE: something we can all do is to leave a comment at whitehouse.gov on the The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 text and comment webpage noting the administration’s failure to permit five days of citizen comment prior to the bill being signed and also saying that we expect that campaign promise to be met going forward.
thanks.
Good morning, selise. CNN is on the story now.
thanks jim. but damn. this should have been our story. better for obama and also much better for us (for our credibility).
p.s. haven’t watched the cnn video yet, for some reason it’s taking a long time to load.
Your an Obama critic? If anything I think we both want to help Obama stay true to what he said.
Being strict with him is true love parents who don’t care spoil their kids and let them do anything they want.
Besides by encouraging public comment on bills we increase people’s participation in democracy even if people disagree this will help Obama.
When people pay attention to the issues we win! The GOP wins when voters are fat, happy and not paying attention.
Increasing voter participation in Democracy will increase that attention.
Its a win/win for us.
well said. thanks. i agree – i want obama to be wildly successful. because his success is what we (dem, the country, the world) desperately need. but when he screws up, and being human that means he will from time to time, being citizens does not mean silence. dissent is still patriotic.
Funny the GOP agrees with you now but when Bush was in Charge No!
now there are more Rs and less Ds in agreement. :(
don’t see why the it should change with who is in office, but i’m getting a little bit clearer understanding of where it comes from.
Great post selise. Thank you. It would be nice if this went Front Page.