The House’s new Statements of Disbursements with Improved Metadata Disclosure
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...
First Branch Forecast for May 30, 2023: The debt limit agreeement
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...
First Branch Forecast for May 22, 2023: The plan for Congress’s funding in FY 24
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...
First Branch Forecast for May 15, 2023: Unions, CRS, USCP, and the Debt Debacle
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...
First Branch Forecast for May 8, 2023: Food and Housing
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...
A Biased Yet Reliable Guide to Sources of Information and Data About Congress
Cross-posted from Congressional Data Coalition Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress. Big Picture There are big gaps in the data story. Even when there’s data, it may not tell the whole story. Info about Congress isn’t entire reliable, even when it is official,...
First Branch Forecast for May 1, 2023: Analyzing CRS
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...
AI-Enhanced House Earmark Request Data
Stacks of dollars in front of US Capitol 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...
First Branch Forecast for April 24, 2023: Norms and power
TOP LINE Countermajoritarianism defined the week, as it has this Congress. House leadership unveiled an unserious debt limit proposal designed to hold their factions together while they hope Dems make an unforced error. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, stand athwart...