WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley today introduced a Senate resolution to improve transparency in the legislative process by making the amendments filed by senators immediately available to the public online. Amendments are already available online to senators and congressional staff once they are filed, and Grassley’s resolution simply would give the public the same level of access.
“The more people are aware of what we’re doing in Washington, the more accountable we are,” Grassley said. “This resolution will improve transparency in the Senate and hold us all more accountable to the people we serve.”
Grassley’s resolution would require the secretary of the Senate to make amendments filed to pending legislation available online at the same time as they become available to senators and staff. As it stands now, numerous amendments get filed to bills during debate, but those amendments are often not publicly available until The Congressional Record is printed the next day. “In a lot of cases, that may be too late. The Senate may have voted already on an amendment,” Grassley said. “Sometimes those amendments are enormous – like managers’ amendments that can constitute an effective rewrite of the underlying bill – but even when they’re narrow, their impact can be tremendous.”
In other cases, Grassley said, the Senate may be voting on an amendment filed days earlier and printed in The Congressional Record one day after it was filed. That means in almost every case, the substance of the amendment being debated and voted on is not easily accessible to the general public. “Only Washington insiders end up navigating the confusing maze to find amendments,” Grassley said. “Instead, the public’s business ought to be public.”
Grassley’s resolution would be a binding requirement on the Senate and would become effective upon a Senate vote.
The resolution is his latest effort to increase Senate transparency. Also today, Grassley testified before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in favor of his longtime proposal, with Sen. Ron Wyden, to end the Senate practice of secret holds on legislation or nominations. Grassley voluntarily discloses any hold he places in the interest of transparency.
The text of his floor speech on his resolution on amendment transparency follows here.
Floor Statement of Sen. Chuck Grassley
on Resolution on Amendment Transparency
Delivered June 23, 2010
I have a long history of promoting transparency in government.
I believe the more people are aware of what we are doing here in Washington, the more accountable we are. The more accountable we are, the better job we do.
It’s a pretty simple concept.
Today I introduced a resolution that will improve transparency in this body and hold us all more accountable to the people we serve.
This resolution requires the Secretary of the Senate to make filed amendments publicly available as soon as they are made available to members and staff.
In this day and age you'd think this was already happening. We live in a world of 24 hour news and instant coverage over the internet of just about everything.
Yet, we have not been allowing the general public to get this information in real time. My proposal would add more transparency to how the Senate works and what we are debating on the Senate floor.
Some might question whether this is necessary. Under the current system, the public is usually able to see the amendment the next day in the Congressional Record.
But in many cases that may be too late. Under the current system, the public may not be able to see the amendment until after debate has begun or the Senate has voted.
This would be even more common during some of the controversial debates that stretch late into the evening – like the recent health reform debate, where hundreds of amendments were filed and votes were cast well past midnight.
In fact, today we make the vote count public on the internet within an hour of when a vote takes place. But we might not make the substance of what we voted on available until the next day. So we let the public see how we voted but we don't always let them see what we were voting on. That doesn't make sense.
Just last night, members tried to call up and pass various amendments. But only the most experienced Washington insider would have been able to actually find copies of those amendments.
Shouldn’t we have some kind of searchable system for amendments to allow our constituents the same access to information as a seasoned lobbyist or congressional staffer?
Don’t we want to give our constituents a chance to see the amendment before it is voted on?
Don’t we want to know what our constituents think about the amendment before we vote on it?
And I’m not just talking about an amendment that changes a word here or there, although those should be publicly available too. Some of the amendments I’m talking about are hundreds of pages long and constitute a complete rewrite of the underlying bill.
Today we will likely see our fifth version of the extenders bill come to the floor in the form of an amendment. But our constituents may not be able to see it until tomorrow.
Shouldn’t the public be able to see that amendment as soon as members and staff can?
This is a representative government and it is impossible to represent the American people if they don’t have access to the same information we do.
In addition to those that will question whether this is really necessary, others might wonder if it is even possible.
Well, it is. In fact we’re already doing it. That's right. The amendments are already available electronically to Senate offices almost immediately after they are filed but they are kept hidden from the public.
As the chart here shows, there is already an Amendment Tracking System website that is only available to members of Congress and staff.
It provides a copy of the amendment, the purpose, the sponsor, and the status.
My resolution would simply make this or a similar website available to the public, much like we already do with the Legislative Information System (LIS) site and the THOMAS site at the Library of Congress.
That way, the general public gets to see exactly what we are seeing. They get the same information and can provide their input prior to a vote.
There is a lot of distrust of government these days. People feel like Congress is ignoring them. Some of this is the result of the policies that are being considered around here.
But it also has to do with the lack of transparency and accountability in government.
I’m not saying this resolution is going to fix all that, because it won’t.
But this resolution is one more step towards letting a little more sunshine into this chamber.
This straightforward resolution will increase transparency, promote accountability, and make us all better representatives of the people we serve.
So I would hope that the Senate would consider this resolution at some point in the near future. And I urge my colleagues to support it. The public deserves access to this information.
Thank you.