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Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Announcements and Statements, Advocacy, Announcements, Blog posts

Statement on Today’s Announcement of New House Staff and Committee Unions

By DanielSchuman June 15, 2023 2 min read

Today, several congressional offices — including the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Democratic staff — have filed union petitions in the House. Staffers in Reps. Val Hoyle, Sylvia Garcia, and Mark DeSaulnier have all recently filed union petitions while a majority of staffers in the offices of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, Mark Takano, Sean […]

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Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for June 12, 2023: Who’s the boss?

By DanielSchuman June 12, 2023 19 min read

TOP LINE This week. The House and Senate are in and we will see whether Republican House leadership regains control of the floor. (We discuss the power struggle in more detail in the next section.) We expect to see top-line appropriations numbers in the House, a few (big) appropriations markups, and NDAA subcommittee markups in […]

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Ethics and Influence, Announcements and Statements, Announcements, Blog posts

Bipartisan Coalition of 35 Organizations and Individuals Urge House to Protect and Strengthen the Office of Congressional Ethics

By DanielSchuman June 12, 2023 7 min read

In advance of tomorrow’s House Administration Oversight Subcommittee hearing on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), 35 organizations and individuals across the political spectrum sent a letter today to leaders of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee urging them to protect and further strengthen the OCE in its mission. Notably, the coalition asks for the removal […]

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Appropriations, Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for June 5, 2023: A return to normalcy

By DanielSchuman June 5, 2023 9 min read

TOP LINE The debt limit crisis mercifully is over, for now, without the Senate as much as cutting into its three-day weekend. The institutional conditions that enabled the drama, however, remain. For now, it’s back to business on the urgent matters of the day like messaging bills about appliances. We’ll be waiting for the stalled […]

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Accountability and Oversight, Modernization, Announcements and Statements, Blog posts

The House’s new Statements of Disbursements with Improved Metadata Disclosure

By DanielSchuman May 31, 2023 3 min read

In a win for government spending transparency, the House is publishing highly detailed information about the money it spends on itself. The Clerk of the House just released the latest House Statements of Disbursements — ​​which catalog every penny spent by every person in the House of Representatives — with new metadata (or entity identifiers).  […]

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Appropriations, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Ethics and Influence, Modernization, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 30, 2023: The debt limit agreeement

By DanielSchuman May 30, 2023 22 min read

TOP LINE Appropriations bills’ markups, scheduled to begin last week, have taken a hiatus awaiting the outcome of the topic du jour. It’s not clear that House Republicans would have been able to pass those bills individually. This week: the deal that Pres. Biden and Speaker McCarthy have reached to raise the debt limit scrambled the […]

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Accountability and Oversight, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 22, 2023: The plan for Congress’s funding in FY 24

By DanielSchuman May 22, 2023 25 min read

TOP LINE Government accountability requires both structural mechanisms and personal will. By moderately decreasing funding levels for the Legislative branch, House appropriators preserved most of the structural accountability capacity of Congress in their FY 2024 spending package. Individuals, however, continue to dodge holding peers accountable. The US Capitol Police is allowing former acting chief Yogananda […]

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AI and Emerging Technology, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 15, 2023: Unions, CRS, USCP, and the Debt Debacle

By DanielSchuman May 15, 2023 17 min read

TOP LINE In a place driven by interpersonal relationships, failures to treat other people with respect in the Legislative branch stand out. Last week, we learned a lot more about how the people inside CRS feel about how upper management treats them and how that impacts its capabilities. We did so through its union, which […]

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AI and Emerging Technology, Appropriations, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Modernization, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 8, 2023: Food and Housing

By DanielSchuman May 8, 2023 13 min read

TOP LINE Lawmakers assumed that income tax revenue coming in during April would give them a few more months to posture before the debt default roiled the markets. The time to implement a solution to the debt limit, however, was back in the lame duck session of the last Congress. Unfortunately, Senator Joe Manchin, along […]

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Accountability and Oversight, AI and Emerging Technology, Announcements and Statements, Blog posts

A Biased Yet Reliable Guide to Sources of Information and Data About Congress

By DanielSchuman May 4, 2023 13 min read

Cross-posted from Congressional Data Coalition Big Picture Federal spending information The current White House Budget proposal, including the useful Budget Appendix (which has the proposed bill text and top level request), is available from the OMB’s website, along with historical tables Oversight and Accountability Legislation Congressional Committees Information about Congress Money in Politics and Ethics […]

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AI and Emerging Technology, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 1, 2023: Analyzing CRS

By DanielSchuman May 1, 2023 17 min read

TOP LINE Last week’s House vote garnered a lot of attention but changed nothing. We see little room for Speaker McCarthy to maneuver to stay at the top of his conference while simultaneously negotiating a deal that avoids default on our nation’s debt. Prior Republican speakers have cut loose part of their conference to avert […]

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AI and Emerging Technology, Appropriations, Modernization, Announcements and Statements, Blog posts

AI-Enhanced House Earmark Request Data

By DanielSchuman April 30, 2023 2 min read

Cross-posted from Congressional Data Coalition At the end of last week, the House Appropriations Committee published all earmark requests for FY 2024 on the committee’s website, including publishing them as a spreadsheet. This is great and welcome news. For the first time, the appropriations spreadsheet separated member names into different columns and included state, district, […]

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