It's not legislation, and it's no substitute for posting the eventual legislative language online before the floor debate. However, President Obama's pledge to post a White House proposed new health care deal online before the bipartisan health summit is without doubt a good thing. It signals that transparency is becoming more noraml. I would argue that it also can make the deal better. Democrats in Congress who want bad provisions that cannot stand the light of day may be discouraged from asking for them if they know the plan will be posted online. Of course, the real test will be whether any final legislative language (and accompanying reports) is posted 72 hours before the floor debate.

Time's Karen Tumulty recently blogged about how some of the less popular provisions might be deleted from the posted plan:

One official told me that a White House measure is likely to look very much like the Senate bill, with a few changes: It would be stripped of some of the controversial special deals, such as the now-infamous "Cornhusker Kickback," and there would be instead a more equitable provision to help states deal with their increased Medicaid costs. There would also likely be some kind of revision (and probable retrenchment) on the deal that was struck with the unions on the "Cadillac Tax."

House Republicans criticizing the amount of time Democrats allow to read the fiscal 2009 omnibus appropriations bill should be reminded over their own record. When they controlled the House during 1995-2006, they enacted nine omnibus spending bills. (This also includes huge, so-called "mini-bus" bills, some of which were more than a thousand pages.) Following is how much time House members had to read omnibus spending bills after they became available and before floor debate began (the definition under current House rules):

April 1996 -- H.R. 3019 -- 1 hour, 24 minutes to read 571 pages

Sept. 1996 -- H.R. 3610 -- 1 hour, 54 minutes to read 1,198 pages

Oct. 1998 -- H.R. 4328 -- 6 hours to read 1,602 pages

Nov. 1999 -- H.R. 3194 -- 12 hours, 38 minutes to read 1,175 pages

Dec. 2000 -- H.R. 4577 -- 6 minutes to read 1,103 pages

Oct. 2000 -- H.R. 4635 -- 18 hours, 9 minutes to read 307 pages

Feb. 2003 -- H.J.Res. 2 -- 6 hours, 7 minutes to read 1,507 pages

**Dec. 2003/Jan. 2004 -- H.R. 2673 -- 13 DAYS to read 1,186 pages**
(The exception that proves the rule.)

Nov. 2004 -- H.R. 4818 -- 14 hours, 13 minutes to read 1,645 pages

Of course, this sin is matched by House Democrats during their majority period that ended in 1994. House Democrats allowed little time to read five omnibus spending bills during 1982-1986.

Many more juicy details on both parties' records and the overall problem can be found in our policy report issued in October 2007, "Monsters from Congress," which is available on this website here. The report also has further details on the methodology used, which understates the problem if anything.

Speaker Pelosi specifically promised that members and the public would have 24 hours to read the big bailout bill before it was brought up on the House floor. I believe that the bill became available Sunday night around 8 pm (perhaps an hour or two earlier if you could get through at the House Committee website). Debate began at 9:27 am Monday morning. That's about 13 hours and 30 minutes to read this bill and think about it. Speaker Pelosi broke her promise.

Members of Congress and the public should have at least three days to read this bill. House rules require three calendar days, but that "three-day rule" is waived routinely by both Democrats and Republicans. (For the record, the House Republican majority in recent years did not even allow 24 hours for important bills like the Medicare drug bill, Patriot Act, etc. so nobody should get partisan about this issue.)

Even 24 hours is utterly insufficient for a measure of this cost, scope and importance, especially since there were no committee hearings, committee markups, or House and Senate versions to later reconcile. Important: the clock should be understood to mean 24 hours before the beginning of CONSIDERATION on the floor, not 24 hours before the VOTE.

Under House rules, the clock on time to read BEGINS when the bill is made available. The bill was posted on the website of the House Financial Services Cmte Sunday evening sometime. I was unable to obtain the text at http://financialservices.house.gov (timed out) until about 8:10 pm EDT. Speaker Pelosi said at the 5:25 pm EDT press conference that the bill was online "now", so perhaps others were able to get it a bit sooner (did anyone get it sooner?)

Under House rules, the clock measuring time to read ENDS when the bill is called up for consideration on the floor, which was 9:27 am on Monday morning.

The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott wrote a commentary: "Rafael DeGennaro of the Citizen Century Institute points out that this is a bipartisan problem going back several decades."

Washington Examiner "Commentary - Mark Tapscott: Bad things happen in a blind Congress"
by Mark Tapscott, August 3, 2008

The stark truth is our senators and representatives routinely vote on monster bills about which they don’t have a clue because they never read them. Day in and day out, they vote blindly to raise our taxes, waste our hard-earned money and subsidize special interests.

They’re not alone, of course, since typically nobody else has read the bills, either. That includes those swarms of legislative aides and the talking-head journalists pronouncing authoritatively on measures they have only read parts of, if at all. It’s just another way official Washington cons the people beyond the Potomac who pay for everything here.

There are hundreds of behind-the-scenes operators, however, who know very well what is contained in those bills. These are the legions of K Street lobbyists, nonprofit activists and other political insiders who frequently help congressional staffers write legislation.

[...]

Rafael DeGennaro of the Citizen Century Institute points out that this is a bipartisan problem going back several decades and is exemplified by those massive continuing resolutions Congress routinely approves at the last minute in order to keep the government operating.

Such measures are always bursting with legislative mischief. DeGennaro offers the reasonable suggestion that Congress delay voting until the public has at least 72 hours to examine the fine print of every proposed law.

Time.com's Jeremy Caplan reports from the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City. He quotes ReadtheBill.org's DeGennaro on the power of collaborative online bill analysis, and notes the organization's efforts to have bills posted online for 72 hours before floor debate.

Time.com "The Citizen Watchdogs of Web 2.0"
by Jeremy Caplan, June 30, 2008

[...]
Perhaps even more significant than analyzing bills after the fact is being able to influence debate beforehand. "The holy grail of this new movement is to develop the technology for collaborative analysis of bills online," says Rafael DeGennaro, a longtime congressional staffer and former president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. An example of the impact of legislative annotation took place as far back as a year ago, when conservative blogger N.Z. Bear posted a PDF version of the 2007 Senate Immigration bill, helping opponents of the bill rally around particularly controversial details that might otherwise have escaped their attention. The text of the bill had been closely guarded prior to the leak the weekend of May 20, 2007. Were it not for the online annotation, the bill might not have been widely analyzed before the debate scheduled for May 21. DeGennaro says the immigration bill's ultimate defeat demonstrated the impact online legislative annotation can have.

DeGennaro now runs ReadtheBill.org, a nonpartisan startup trying to build consensus around the idea that bills should be posted on the Web for 72 hours before Congressional debate begins, so the public can assess and respond to pending legislation.