Congress is fiercely debating the latest economic recovery legislation, H.R. 1: and at 700 pages (that’s like $1 billion per page!) you should be coming straight to GovTrack for the most advanced tools to read the bill. Here’s a comparison of the House version and the latest Senate version.

Also check out the site ReadTheStimulus.org for more ways to read the bill. Read it all..

Now that we’ve passed election season, things are pretty much wrapping up in the legislative branch. The House has already adjourned and will start a new session on January 3, 2009, according to the resolution H. Con. Res. 440. The Senate is still in session and will meet this month, but without the House they will probably not push any measures forward. Read it all..

You probably already noticed from the note at the top of the site, but just to archive it: here are some links related to the economic stimulus bill that was enacted this month (and then failed to do any good, apparently).

Read it all..

The New York Times has an interesting flash application that breaks down the text of yesterday’s Democratic debate (there was a debate?) by speaker and shows visually the distribution of who spoken when through the debate. They took the transcript, made it visual and interactive, and the end result is a vastly different view onto the debate than anyone had before.

One can’t help but notice that the different candidates are not getting the same amount of speaking time. Clinton spoke more than 3.5 times more words, and the same for speaking time, than Biden. For that matter, basically so did the moderator, who held the floor for more time than anyone but Clinton. It’s no wonder that Clinton is considered “the Democrat to beat” considering she’s in our face more.

If the numbers weren’t so vastly different between the candidates, we’d chalk it up to some random variation that happens from debate to debate. But, from the numbers, the speaking times are clearly planned. It’s so clear that I feel like maybe I missed something. Is it common knowledge that the debates are proportioning time out to the candidates based on their poll numbers (or something equivalent)? It’s not just that the front-runners are getting more time. The statistical correlation is ridiculously high (speaking time versus FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. Oct. 23-24: r=.96). That is, the debate organizers are basically using this formula to determine how much time each candidate should get:

Speaking Time = 8:26 minutes + 25 seconds * Latest Poll Number (%)

Of course, debate organizers can’t control exactly how long each candidate talks for, but the candidates only deviated from the formula by at most two minutes and twenty seconds (Biden, who spoke less, and Edwards, who spoke more).

This lecture by lawyer-professor Lawrence Lessig addresses some simple policy issues that were gotten wrong by Congress, and what role money had in the failure of Congress to see the whole picture. As with any Lessig lecture, it’s quite good. Here, he is setting the stage for the problem and who needs to do something about it (hint: not Congress).

(Hat-tip to Ellen Miller’s blog at Sunlight for the link.)

Bill Allison at Sunlight quotes an article in Roll Call:

Every private entity that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year’s defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis of House Appropriations and federal elections records by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

PACs and employees of those 26 groups together have contributed $413,250 to Murtha since the beginning of 2005. He collected nearly a quarter of the sum — $100,750 — in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests.

To put it in perspective (because I hate numbers reported in isolation—for Eddie Izzard fans— “squeezy squeezy… is that good??”), $413k is about 15% of Murtha’s total receipts in 2005-2006. That’s huge, for 15% of your incoming contributions to be repaid in earmarks, and for sure the earmarks sent back at least that amount to the contributors.

Of course, I always like to see the methodology before taking any results too far, but Roll Call is subscriber-only. Murtha staffers or supports that might be reading that think the conclusion is off should email me.

Yesterday the House passed the Senate’s ethics bill S. 1. I’ve covered the details of the bill on the Open House blog. All in all, it’s good progress.

Here are some pages on GovTrack related to things in the news:

• The State of the Union Address
• S. 1: The Senate’s legislative reform bill, already passed by the Senate.
• H.R. 170: A legislative reform bill in the House that GovTrack supports.

Stay tuned for important news about legislative reform sponsored by the people…

I guess House members have “senioritis”, when the last part of their final term doesn’t matter anymore. Check out the 33% absense rate in this vote on Saturday [vote details]! For a Congress meeting for such a record few days, you’d think they could at least show up.

Just a few weeks left for congressmen to pass any more legislation before this Congress finishes. Any unfinished business is cleared from the books in January, so urge your representatives to get the things done you hoped they would before it’s too late. (Meanwhile, I’m off to attend a mini-conference on Open Government, Open Data!)