Say what?

[jducoeur]

Okay, here's a question to the lazyweb: what's the best way to look up a Senate bill?

The reason I ask is that I just got a rather curious email from the American Family Association. (Yes, yes, I know. I honestly have no idea how I wound up on their mailing list, but I've found it a convenient way to keep track of what the bad guys are saying.) Quoting the interesting bits:

"The U.S. Senate is poised to pass Senate Bill 1 (Section 220), which would effectively keep AFA and every other pro-family organization in America from providing you information on bills in Congress. UnderSenate Bill 1 (Section 220), we would only be able to provide you information on a bill at a high cost and at great danger of being penalized by Congress.

To put it bluntly, members of Congress are tired of getting your e-mails and phone calls, and Senate Bill 1(Section 220) is designed to keep information from you that might inspire you to call or write your senator.

Click Here to read AFA's review of Senate Bill 1 (Section 220).

The new Democratic Senate thinks that if it can keep you from getting information — which is what Senate Bill 1 (Section 220) would do — then it will not be getting e-mails and phone calls from you.

Senators favoring this bill are simply tired of hearing from you. That is the bottom line. They don’t want to hear from you. They don’t want you to be informed. They want to silence you. How? By simply keeping you from receiving information that AFA provides.

Now, granted, I've found it a pretty good rule of thumb to assume that the AFA is *always* in the wrong: I don't believe I have yet found a single issue on which I agree with them. But now I'm rather curious about what the bill actually says. Pointers?

Comments

[cheshyre]

I tend to use http://thomas.loc.gov/ but it sometimes takes a few tries to figure out the correct way to query.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Thomas is my general first stop, as well.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

here is the link for active legislation- it's on the the Senate Webpage. The link for Senate Bill 1 takes you to links for the text andf some other stuff on thomas.gov or something.

http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/b_three_sections_with_teasers/active_leg_page.htm

[jducoeur]

Useful -- thanks! Looking at the text of the relevant section makes it clear why the AFA is so pissed off, and that my sympathy for them is rather limited. I'll need to think about that text, but at first blush it seems like a plausible compromise...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I think the section you want is here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c110zMMyGM:e38473:
this is about disclosure of efforts to stir up "grassroots" activity.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I keep going back and forth and forgot to open a new tab....

Essentially, the bill seems to say that an organization must tell congress if it hires someone to get information out and encourage people to call their legislators if
a) they spend more than 10,00
and
b) the people they're stirring up are not members of the organization (with that membership being pretty specifically defined)

The AFA is trying to say, I think, that they're going to have to spend a lot of bureaucracy to report to the government if they attempt to create a grassroots rebellion, and that if they, oops, accidentally create something that they don't report they'll get a BIG FINE.

Looking at the sponsors of the bill as a whole (and it's sort of a portmanteau reform bill), they include a lot of folks who I don't generally see as being exclusionists or who want to hide things. I suspect this section is designed to keep those organizations who hide their efforts to get a ruckus started and work to get hysteria going, sometimes from an unanticipated direction.

Lord knows senators aren't tired of hearing from you, but they probably are tired of getting 30,000 identical content-free postcards you picked up from some guy sitting at a cardtable at the grocery store.

[jducoeur]

Thanks! I figured it was probably *something* along those lines -- in general, assuming that the AFA is evil incarnate is usually correct -- but I wasn't managing to decode their "analysis"...

Oh, btw...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

A, this is the first bill of the season in its first draft, so nobody knows what it will look like by the time it gets rewritten 90 times and through a zillion committees, and

B, my analysis is really off the cuff, but it's good practice since I'm interviewing with a legislative and regulatory lawyer on the team for the job I want tomorrow. ;-) Thanks for the opportunity!

thanks!

[moonchyld1.livejournal.com]

i stumbled upon this entry from google when a friend forwarded me the email referenced above.. when i saw the source of the email i had a strong feeling that it was all scare tactics designed to get people in an uproar about things they didn't understand..

anyways, most of the results were on sites affiliated or similar to the AFA, so i was glad to hear a consise more accurate summary of what the bill is proposing. :)

Re: thanks!

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Be sure and read 's comment below, too, where he sets out the points of all the parts of the bill.

further analysis

[dsrtao]

S103 Rule XLIV is excellent: it would require every earmark (money going to a non-Federal entity, basically) in a bill to be listed along with the name of the congresscritter who put it in and an explanation of what it's supposed to do.

S104 puts conference reports on the Net.

S105 removes floor privileges for ex-congresscritters who have become lobbyists or are acting as lobbyists.

S107 is anti-travel-boondoggles. Lobbyists can't pay for, arrange for, or go on trips. Disclosure must be made of air trips not made on commercial carriers.

S108 prohibits staffers from working as lobbyists for a year after they leave.

S109 requires public disclosure of employment negotiations for congresscritters that happen before their successor has been elected.

S110 prohibits staffers from having any contact with a Senator's spouse or immediate family member if such person is a lobbyist.

Re: further analysis

[jducoeur]

Yaas. Once I saw what it was, it's clearly the much-touted Lobbying Reform Act, and overall it looks like a decent collection of steps. So what's actually going on with the AFA is that, as a powerful lobbyist of a particular stripe, they are horrified that it's actually trying to deal with *them* as well as all the rest...

Re: further analysis

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I think this is an excellent set of reforms, personally.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the anti-astroturfing regulation?

How could that be bad?

[jducoeur]

It could be bad if you're the one doing the astroturfing. (As I expected, this exercise was informative mostly in what it says about the AFA...)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

The irony of astroturfing in favor of astroturfing is pretty bad.

I've used their web sites to send messages that contradict what AFA wants. It's fun, but kinda lame.

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,460449,00.html

[jducoeur]

That is so, so *wrong*. I'm going to toppost this link; thanks for pointing it out...

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

it seemed..... to fit/be related to the topic of this post

[jducoeur]

Oh, absolutely, especially once it became clear what was really going on...