Last week the Bulk Data Task Force (BDTF) convened internal and external stakeholders to discuss, you guessed it, congressional data. Established in 2012, the BDTF brings together parties from across the legislative branch—including the House Clerk, the Secretary of the Senate, Government Publishing Office (GPO), Library of Congress (LOC), and more—as well as external expert […]
DESCRIBING WHY CONGRESS IS BROKEN can be hard, but this awesome claymation video helps. Seriously, it’s better than schoolhouse rock. (Thanks CS Monitor). ON STARTING IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS, PELOSI’S STRATEGY HAS BEEN DELAY, DELAY, DELAY. But with Rep. Justin Amash’s statement this weekend that the “Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet […]
THIS IS YET ANOTHER long winded, discursive First Branch Forecast. What’s inside? • What happened when the Modernization Committee examined transparency as a means to strengthen Congress? • What exactly was included in the leg branch’s budget bill? The contents may surprise you. • Oversight Wars: the phantom privilege • Freedom of the Press • Swamp […]
BIG PICTURE: SPENDING ON THE HOUSE House Leg Branch Approps Subcommittee favorably reported its FY 2020 approps bill that contains a ton of great provisions. Oddly, Republican members spoke favorably about the bill during the proceedings even as they voted against it, suggesting that their opposition had to do with political concerns unrelated to the work of the […]
The U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has the mission of ensuring public access to our elected officials while protecting members of Congress and the Capitol campus. The USCP is well resourced, with a $450 million budget — a little larger than the budget for the police department serving Austin, Texas, which has a population of 950,000 […]
Congressional Budget Justifications (CBJs) are plain-language explanations of how an agency proposes to spend money it requests that Congress appropriate, but how easy is it for congressional staff and citizens to find these documents? Demand Progress surveyed 456 federal agencies and entities for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 and found: 7.5 percent of the 173 […]
According to the Architect of the Capitol, it will take several billion dollars to keep the Congress from literally falling apart. This, and much more, was the subject of four legislative branch appropriations hearings this past week. It’s not just the physical infrastructure of Congress that’s eroding, the power of the institution has taken a […]
The US Capitol Police announced yesterday they will publish their weekly arrest summaries online each Wednesday that they had previously had distributed via email to the press. This practice will start on January 2, 2019. The summaries will include “the Capitol File Number (CFN); crime classification with any additional charges; offense date and time, and […]
In the lead up to the Senate vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Capitol Police arrested hundreds — if not thousands — of protesters. We can’t say how many people were arrested or what they were arrested for, however, as the Capitol Police did not publish that information online and will […]
The House of Representatives has an Inspector General that is authorized to provide independent, nonpartisan investigations into the House’s operations, but over the years that office’s findings have become largely shrouded from public view. In what ways has it become less transparent? How many reports does the office issue and what do they cover? We […]
It is hard enough to be a congressional staffer, but if you have young children the problem is magnified. Washington, D.C. is the most expensive place in the United States to raise a family, congressional staff work on average 53 hours-per-week when Congress is in session, and child care options in the nation’s capital can […]
A subset of current CRS reports was published online by the Library of Congress on Tuesday. While federal law mandated the Library publish by September 18 any non-confidential final written work product of CRS containing research or analysis in any format that is available for general congressional access and that was published after the date of enactment […]