GovTrack.us Blog

Site news and community analysis of U.S. legislation, at GovTrack.us.
September 28, 2008

“Writing” versus “Sponsoring”, and who decides what gets a vote?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

Here’s another legislative process Q&A post. We tackle two questions in this post. Here’s the first:

Does one know who writes a bill? Is writing a bill considered different than being the Sponsor of the bill?

Read it all..

September 25, 2008

Utah Senator Crusades for Bureaucratic Gobbledygook

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: legalese

This post by Coby Logen (a pseudonym), who blogs on government website matters at .govWatch and has worked to improve government websites for the past five years, is syndicated here with permission.Thanks Coby!

Senator Bennett from Utah is single-handedly quashing the most commonsense, bi-partisan bill this year–a requirement that the U.S. government write clear, concise, and intelligible English. And he is doing so based on a misreading of the bill.

Read it all..

September 18, 2008

What Does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

Using the new Q&A tool, a visitor asked (here):

What does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?

GovTrack tries to answer. Read on… Read it all..

September 9, 2008

Welcome to GovTrack’s Fourth Year

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: sitenews

If you’ve been here before August, you surely have noticed already the most obvious recent change. But besides the visual refresh, there are a number of new things here at GovTrack, and more planned. Read on for details. Read it all..