Today’s question comes from Erika M:

I see yea, nay, no, aye as the way congressmen voted.  What does aye mean?

Ah parliamentary procedure. There’s no meaningful difference between Yea and Aye, and Nay and No. They both mean “I vote in favor” or “I vote against”. The difference is just a matter of procedure. The Constitution actually requires “Yea” and “Nay” for votes on the passage of bills (Article I Section 7), and so the House and Senate both do that for those particular votes.

In fact, the Senate uses Yea and Nay for all votes. Good for them for keeping things simple. It’s another story for the House.

There are two peculiarities of the House that make the answer to the question not so simple. First, they use Aye and No for all voice votes, where congressmen just shout out their vote and the chair judges who won just by listening. (Anyone can subsequently demand that the votes be recorded individually, in which case a recorded vote is used. In the Senate, voice votes use Yea and Nay.)

The second peculiarity of the House is that it operates in two modes of procedure, and that determines which kind of vote is used for recorded votes not on the passage of bills (because those are always Yea and Nay). These final types of votes could be for amendments, motions, etc. The first mode is normal House floor debate, which uses Yea and Nay for recorded votes, so you will see Aye and No for voice votes but Yea and Nay for recorded votes. Yea and Nay are reserved for this mode of debate only. The second mode is when the House operates as if it were a committee made up of everyone, called “The Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union,” and in this mode Aye and No are used for recorded votes as well as voice votes.

Some more details are in House Rules, if you want to pour through the details. It’s in Rules of the House, Rule XX, and House Practice in the section Voting.

Visitor WB asks:

I understand there are different Bills passed by congress regularly. Some with “H.R.”, “S”, H. Res” and other variations. My questions is this: What are the types of Bills and what does each designations stand for? Where is each Bill valid? Who is subject to that specific Bill? Read it all..

Donny Shaw over at OpenCongress says that House Republicans are explaining their views on the health care bill by linking people directly to the paragraphs in the bills they find important. I think that’s great. They may be using OpenCongress, but we invented that feature over here on GovTrack — OpenCongress is based on GovTrack — so we’ll take some pride and credit too.

Here’s what Donny wrote:

Here’s a great example of the kind of textually-informed conversations about bills we have been trying to encourage. Republicans in the House of Representatives are extracting chunks of legislative text from the OpenCongress health care bill page (H.R. 3962), giving their take and opening them up for discussion. They’re using OpenCongress’ bill text permalinking tool to refer people back to the specific lines of text in the 1,990 page bill that they’re talking about.Check it out — House Republicans Read the Bill>>

They’re using a service called Amplify that lets you “clip, share and discuss interesting things you read on the web.” It integrates with Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.

I just set up an account quickly and was able to leave a comment on one of Rep. Lynn Jenkins’ [R, KS-2] posts. Then I was able to easily share the post on Twitter. The whole process is open, transparent and social.

Having the links back to the exact portion of the bill under discussion make it engaging. It’s easy to be disingenuous about legislation by making a false claim and backing it up with a line of text taken out of context. That’s basically how the “death panel” myth was spread over the summer. But providing a link to the specific line within the bill invites people to look it up for themselves, read it in context and make their own judgement.

Anyways, go check it out. They’re putting up several new posts per hour.

I’m a wonk, you’re a wonk. We like reading legislation and we’re proud of it. Strut your stuff with GovTrack’s new merchandise.

About a month ago I started a t-shirt design contest. With a $100 prize at stake, about a dozen people submitted ideas — three submitted shirt-ready images. Congrats to Matt Pentifallo who stole the prize for his satirical design:

I Know What You Did Last Session

(For the older readers, this is a reference to a horror movie.)

Ben Rellick submitted some new logo images, based on the site’s current logo. In appreciation, I decided post-hoc to add a runner-up prize of $60 for Ben. Ben’s submissions are on t-shirts and a mouse pad. Here’s the mouse pad:

GovTrack Logo Mouse Pad

Finally, Susie Holderfield submitted a cute red G with an eye inside, which I turned into a mug:

Red G Mug

Thanks to all of the submitters!

I also added a design myself. It’s an image of a bill, the House’s health care bill, and on the back is the page with the supposed dead panels, which are clearly not mentioned on that page.

The merchandise is now available. It’s all created, managed, and shipped through a third-party website that does this sort of stuff — Zazzle.com. I just upload the designs.

Now, I didn’t do this to make money so all of the merchandise are available at the lowest rate that Zazzle.com will let me sell them for. But, people have asked me how to donate to GovTrack and I’ve always declined donations in the past (GovTrack is NOT an actual non-profit charitable organization), but if you want to support the site, you can also buy the same merchandise at a marked-up price. You choose.

Sara from Kentucky asks:

I don’t know if I am hearing accurate information. Some of us want bill numbers listed in newspapers so we can look them up. “America’s Healthy Future Act”  has no number and Baucus’s office says that it will not receive a number until it goes to the Senate Floor. It is not on GovTrack. Would it be on Thomas?

HR 676 has never gone to the House floor, yet it has a number.  Why is this?

The issue that Sara raises is an important one for government transparency: where does the legislative process begin? the first step in the parliamentary procedure for a bill to become law is for the sponsor of the bill in the House or Senate to submit the bill formally to the clerk of the chamber. At that point, the clerk assigns it a number. Then the bill gets assigned (”referred”) to committees which begin the deliberations for the bill, and eventually, if it is lucky, it may come to the full chamber for a vote.

The tricky thing for us on the outside is that there’s no stopping congress from deliberating on an idea before it is submitted to the clerk and officially becomes a bill under consideration. And if it’s not an official bill, it’s not on the government website THOMAS or on GovTrack. This isn’t something you can prevent. There will always be deliberations outside of the official way things work. And I think that’s fine. It does make things difficult to follow, though.

That’s what happened with the stimulus bills a year ago. There were a number of drafts and revisions all before the bill actually became an actual bill. And that’s what’s happening in the Senate with drafting its health care bill. (The House drafted H.R. 3200.) Until the bill gets formally submitted, it’s not “in the system”. You can only get a draft — an essentially unofficial bill — from the congressman’s or committee’s website that is working on it, if they care to share.

The Senate Committee on Finance posted a PDF of the latest draft. It’s called a Chairman’s Mark because it is the draft bill with the markups (i.e. revisions) that the chair of the committee (Max Baucus) wants to push forward. It’s what the committee voted on, and subsequently passed. I expect this to be submitted to the Senate clerk and get a bill number soon.

I would like GovTrack to start collecting draft bills where we can find them, but I haven’t had the time yet to build the infrastructure on the site for it yet.

Thanks for the question, Sara.

Hey, we need some cool GovTrack apparel, right? Design a GovTrack t-shirt or send me a funny expression related to GovTrack to put on a t-shirt, and if I get some good responses I’ll pick a winner and send back a $100 gift certificate to somewhere. Email your submissions to operations@govtrack.us.

?????? ????? ????

?????? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ????

Here’s what’s been happening with the site this summer:

• We’ve upgraded our hardware to top-of-the-line equipment so that we can keep up with the increasing number of visitors coming to GovTrack.
• I’ve hired a moderator (my first staff member!) to process the submissions to the Community Q&A section of the site. A long backlog of submissions awaiting approval built up while I was on vacation — hopefully never again. This also frees up my time for other things.
• We’re now recommending Twitter hashtags like #usbill and #hr3200 for bills. See our recommendation. No sooner did we recommend #usbill that people started tweeting with it.
• Pages for bills now show industry supporters and opponents thanks to MAPLight.org, and for enacted bills now show who was president and signed it. Cosponsors are now shown in bold if you are tracking them.
• Pages for cloture votes now link to Filibusted.us which has more information on the issue of filibusters.
• You can now jump to a congressional distristrct by entering a street address, and if you hover your mouse over a congressional district on the maps page it tells you which district it is above the map.
• You now don’t have to create a new account on GovTrack to store your trackers or get email updates. You can log in using your Google, OpenID, or some other existing logins you may already have.
• Various small mistakes were fixed: California is now listed as having 54 districts, not 53, on the maps page.
• The bill text pages should load  faster now for long bills.
• Pages for Members of Congress now show their latest tweets, if they are on Twitter.

GovTrack is going to be upgrading its hardware very soon now. We’ll probably be down for about a day while we get the new hardware set up. Thanks for your patience. Read it all..

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Full Business Meeting
Tuesday 7/21/09, 10:00am, Russell 253

Summary

This markup session was convened primarily to deal with transit funding reauthorization measures, and a number of other matters were dispensed with in the meantime. Almost all of the details at hand were worked out beforehand and behind the scenes, except for one single amendment in the FAA reauthorization bill. Everything was reported out favorably by voice vote immediately after opening statements, and Chairman Rockefeller even had to apologize to the audience for the stunning lack of transparency evident in the process.

The unresolved amendment, introduced by Cantwell and modified by Warner, was somewhat mundane, pertaining to an increase in the number of takeoff/landing slots at Reagan National Airport. Nevertheless, it did generate a considerable amount of engaged debate on the merits. Sen. Ensign had a competing amendment regarding the same matter, but pulled it in favor of further negotiation when the bill reaches the full Senate. Probably because of Sen. Ensign’s opposition to the Cantwell/Warner amendment, most Republicans voted no in the ultimate roll call vote and the amendment failed 12-13. There was some immediately ensuing procedural confusion as to what the Senators had just voted on, but that was quickly resolved.

Topics

1) S.1274 - the American Communities’ Right to Public Information Act
2) S.1451 – Federal Aviation Administration Air Transportation Modernization & Safety Improvement Act (aka FAA program funding reauthorization)
3) An Act to Extend the Programs of SAFETEA-LU for an 18-Month Period (aka surface transportation funding extension – a reauthorization postponement the House has strongly opposed, but the Administration supports with some caveats). There is no formal bill number for this measure as of yet.

1)      Polly Trottenberg, to be Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy of the United States Department of Transportation
2)      Deborah A.P. Hersman, to be Chairman and Member (Reappointment) of the National Transportation Safety Board
3)      Richard A. Lidinsky, Jr., to be Commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission (PN 623)
4)      Meredith Attwell Baker, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission
5)      Mignon L. Clyburn, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission

Hearing Review

The major topic of this markup session was the FAA reauthorization package, which is a key responsibility of the Senate Commerce committee. While jurisdiction over surface transportation is shared with a number of committees, most notably Environment & Public Works, jurisdiction over air transportation seems to fall almost exclusively to this committee. This measure received most of the time and attention of the committee members in this meeting, and one amendment in particular generated a considerable amount of controversy.

This was one of the stranger committee business meetings I have seen. I also spoke with one veteran lobbyist who had never seen a markup conducted in the particular way this one was. Perhaps this is a normal style for Commerce under Rockefeller, but it was clear that the process confused many of the folks in the room, including a few Senators.

The hearing started normally. Chairman Rockefeller gave a 5-minute opening statement in which he outlined the day’s agenda, and made clear that the FAA authorization would be the main point of focus. He thanked the Senators who played a key role in crafting that bill – Hutchison, Dorgan, DeMint and himself. He stated there is an urgent need to modernize the air transport system – we are currently behind Mongolia. He also declared his support for the SAFETEA-LU extension, mainly on the grounds that Majority Leader Reid had asked for a “clean” bill out of all relevant committees.

Ranking Member Hutchison also supports the FAA reauthorization as a whole, but is concerned about a few provisions. Unfortunately I did not catch exactly what those provisions were. She is less supportive of an 18-month surface transportation extension, believing it is both too long to delay and that certain trucking and safety concerns should be addressed immediately. She did note the need to replenish the almost-insolvent highway trust fund, but openly wondered whether the HTF is still even necessary. As a donor state (albeit far less than many other states), Texas should not have to subsidize other states, and states should be able to take care of their own road maintenance needs.

Senator Dorgan, the chair of the Aviation Subcommittee, lauded the new reauthorization plan. It is a 2-year authorization to allow time for the new FAA administrators to implement basic and needed initial reforms. His favorite new initiative was a move to a new GPS tracking system called NextGen. However, many good provisions were left out because of the need to pass a bill with broad bipartisan support and little controversy.

Senator DeMint basically concurred with Dorgan’s sentiments and was happy they were able to craft a bill without much controversy or acrimony.

At this point, the hearing started to deviate from the norm. Hutchison moved to report ALL matters before the committee favorably, including the FAA bill as amended. The motion was approved by unanimous consent, and the proceeding voice vote then passed with no objections. So that was that, hearing over, right?

Well, not quite. The as amended part had not been dealt with yet. In other words, they passed the bills and nominees out of committee with the understanding that amendments would be considered immediately afterwards and included in the committee report. Only then did they tackle amendments to the FAA reauthorization bill.

At that point, Rockefeller gave a quick overview of the bill and announced the amendments to be considered, mostly en masse. He announced 13 member amendments that were to be voted on, and brought them all to a vote by unanimous consent. All 13 amendments were then approved with a single voice vote. Rockefeller then brought up 11 more amendments that had been modified by committee leadership/staff, and those were also approved in a single vote. Now that’s efficiency. Noting the somewhat confused audience of mostly lobbyists and entry-level Hill staffers, Chairman Rockefeller took a step back for a minute and acknowledged that they had worked everything out behind the scenes. He sort of apologized for conducting business in such a non-transparent manner.

The debate turned to the main issue of the day, Sen. Cantwell’s amendment to increase the number of takeoff/landing slots in Reagan National Airport. Cantwell gave an opening statement in which she basically claimed Western states were being punished by not having enough access to this very convenient airport. Sen. Ensign had a counterproposal that would allow for trading of slots among airlines in different metro-region airports. He liked his version because it allowed for a more market-oriented approach. Sen. Warner, whose state plays host to the airport in question, introduced a modification to Cantwell’s amendment that would make it more accommodating to Virginians in the path of the potentially expanded airport. Boxer chimed in to say she worked with Ensign on his amendment, but will support all amendments that come before the committee. Dorgan stated that he chose not to address the issue in the reauthorization language because it was controversial, but he would support the Cantwell/Warner amendment. Ensign announced he would oppose Cantwell/Warner in hopes of reaching a compromise before the full Senate, but would pull his own amendments from immediate consideration. Lautenberg chimed in on his own pet issue by saying they wouldn’t need more plane slots if there was a nationwide high speed rail network.

Finally, they went to a roll call on the Cantwell amendment, as modified by Warner. The bill went roughly down partisan lines, although a few Democrats (Kerry, Klobuchar and Pryor) and Republican Johanns defected. As it turned out, those two net Democratic defections were enough to defeat the amendment, 12-13. A couple votes switched at the last minute, which complicated matters; Kerry’s switch from yea to nay (by proxy) in particular was an intriguing one.

As the committee clerk announced the results of the vote, a murmur arose among the audience, which seemed to have expected passage. Rockefeller immediately proceeded to announce a roll call vote for the original underlying Cantwell amendment, at which point Ensign all but cut him off midsentence. He angrily expressed an impression that the Cantwell amendment had just been defeated, which meant there was no reason to have another vote on the same measure. This touched off a somewhat disjointed stretch in which various senators attempted to figure out exactly what they had just voted on. Since Rockefeller ultimately wields the authority to make such decisions, he maintained that Cantwell had the ability to request a vote on the underlying amendment without the Warner modification. He suggested they have a voice vote as a compromise, and everyone including Cantwell seemed to settle on that idea. They did so, and although the yeas and nays sounded quite similar in volume (probably reflective of another very close vote), Rockefeller immediately proclaimed that it sounded to him that the noes won, and that was that. Cantwell maintained that she would continue fighting for her measure on the Senate floor.

Warner did have an amendment to the surface transit bill related to data collection and performance evaluation, but he pulled it from consideration given the Chair’s desire for a “clean” extension. At that point, it was all over but the closing statements.

My general takeaway was one of puzzlement. It was unclear whether the intention of leadership was for the Cantwell amendment to fail or whether they had no general position. These sort of situations are hard to read because one never knows what sort of backroom dealing is at play to influence the vote decisions of individual members. Overall, this markup was a valuable reminder that Senate process is often very difficult to understand for outside observers, even those who are familiar with the issues at hand.

Attendees

Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chair
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Ranking Member
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Jim DeMint (R-SC), Aviation Subcommittee Ranking Member
Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Aviation Subcommittee Chair
John Ensign (R-NV)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Mel Martinez (R-FL)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)

GovTrack has taken the plunge to Twitter. I’ll be tweeting from time to time as @govtrack. Also, I’ve put up recommended hashtags  on the pages for bills so we can more easily track the chatter on legislation happening in the twitterverse. (It’s in the blue box on the right side.)

You might have noticed the last blog post was a bit out of the ordinary here. It wasn’t written by me, and it’s coverage of a recent congressional hearing. I’m starting up a new experiment, a citizen reporters team to cover the goings on in congress that the mainstream press doesn’t. Stay tuned!