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..

You may have seen the new YouTube channels for the House and Senate and the kind of dorky video intro from our congressional leaders, which Sunlight’s Paul Blumenthal reported on. Basically, Congress has entered the 21st century (finally) by starting to communicate with their constituents using video, which is fantastic news.

You can follow these videos on GovTrack!

1) There is a new feed dedicated to these videos, aggregating all videos posted by Members to YouTube. You can find it on the feeds page.

2) Pages for Members now highlight their latest YouTube video at the top of the page: example.

3) Feeds/Trackers for Members (which you can subscribe to directly, include with your other trackers, or get email updates for) now include their latest video postings: example.

As GovTrack continues its fifth year and we head into the new session of Congress starting in 2009, we have a bunch of new site updates to share. Read it all..

Sometimes I get really frustrated with politics, which has become so much about denying, oppressing, and outspending the other viewpoint rather than debate and consensus. GovTrack received this question through the bill Q&A system:

Why does anyone think our government has the right to allow women to murder their children?  What can be done to ensure this bill never passes?

and it just makes me want to shut the site down and move on with life. 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..

We’ve hit the 50,000 mark, the number of people that have created an account on the site to configure their trackers and get email updates. More updates coming in a few weeks.

Q:”What happens to an approved Senate bill with respect to an identical House bill? If the House version is defeated, does the bill end?”

This is a great legislative process question. Let me rephrase it: What are companion bills and how do they work?

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..

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..

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..