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Thursday, January 3, 2013

113th Congress Sworn in Thursday: Meet Your Leaders

Nearly 100 new members of Congress will take the reins

By Emily Feldman |  Thursday, Jan 3, 2013  |  Updated 10:32 AM CST




113th Congress Sworn in Thursday: Meet Your Leaders

AP
Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz and Tammy Duckworth are among the nearly 100 new lawmakers to be sworn in to Congress Thursday. 


The 113th Congress will convene Thursday at noon for the first time to officially take the reins of government from its predecessors, who bear the distinction of being the least productive and popular Congress in modern American history.
Eighty-two freshmen lawmakers will be among those sworn in at the House and 12 in the Senate, though the party breakdown will remain mostly unchanged. Democrats will still control the Senate, 55 to 45, and Republicans will still have a majority in the House of Representatives, 233 to 200 (with two vacancies). But the incoming class of lawmakers is more diverse than any before it.
It will include the first Hindu to serve in either the House or Senate (Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii), and the first Buddhist senator (Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii). But it's not quite that simple. Gabbard told The New York Times that while she identifies as a Hindu, "I am much more into spirituality than I am religious labels.” Hirono told the paper that she is a “nonpracticing Buddhist” who “considers religion a personal matter.”
The 113th Congress will also include the first openly bisexual congresswoman (Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.) who is also the first member of Congress to self-identify as religiously unaffiliated. Ten other members of the 113th Congress did not specify a specific religious affiliation, the Pew Forum points out, yet Sinema is the only to describer her religion as “none.”
Congress will also swear in its first openly gay lawmaker of color (Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif.) four African Americans, 10 Latinos, five Asian Americans and two dozen women.
Women will now comprise 20 percent of the Senate and nearly 18 percent of the House.
New Hampshire will be the first state to send women, and only women, to Washington for representation. It already had two female Senators, Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen, but the 2012 election put women in the state’s two House seats: Ann McLane Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter. (Another woman, Maggie Hassan, was elected governor.)
And there will also be a number of rising stars to watch out for:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): The Harvard law professor beat out incumbent Scott Brown in one of the most expensive races in history. (At least $68 million went into the fierce fight, according to The Associated Press.) The architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren portrayed herself as a champion for the middle class, consumers and women and jumped into the national spotlight with a prime speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention.
Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.): This Iraq war veteran, who lost both legs after her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq, didn't win the first time she ran for Congress in 2006, but she beat out Tea Partier Joe Walsh in 2012 with 55 percent of the vote. Both made headlines when Walsh suggested that Duckworth boasted about her military past and therefore was not a "true hero." She told NBC Chicago that transportation is at the top of her priority list when as she heads to Washington.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): The former governor of Maine ran as an independent, but will caucus with Democrats. Still, he's said that he believes he can bridge the gap between the two parties—a tall task given the deep partisanship in Washington.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): Tea Party darling Ted Cruz beat out former Democratic state Rep. Paul Sadler for the state's open Senate seat. He promised to work to limit the size and power of government and said he wants to build a wall that spans that Texas-Mexico border. He's the first Latino to represent his state in the upper chamber.
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.): Sinema was homeless for a time, worked as a social worker and quickly rose through the ranks of state legislature before hitting the national stage, according to Fronteras. She grew up Mormon but later dropped any religious affiliation. She will push for limiting foreclosures, and creating jobs while in Washington.
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.): Yoho worked as a large-animal veterinarian with little political experience before jumping into the ring and defeating incumbent Cliff Stearns. In explaining why he refused to sign Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, Yoho told NPR that he didn't want to handcuff his legislative options. "The only pledge that I made is I said I would serve eight years, and I'm going home," he said.

Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-Mass.)
: Robert F. Kennedy's grandson is the latest Kennedy to be elected to Congress. He tied the knot last month and told the Boston Herald earlier this week that he's ready to take on gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook school shooting. "It's something I certainly feel strongly about." Both his grandfather and great-uncle, President Kennedy, were assassinated by gunmen.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah): Chris Stewart is a businessman and former Air Force pilot who has also written two New York Times bestsellers, “Seven Miracles That Saved America” and “The Miracle of Freedom.” The Mormon father of six is pals with conservative pundit Glenn Beck and a proponent of American exceptionalism, according to the National Journal. A self-described “Second Amendment guy,” Stewart told the Salt Lake Tribune that since the Newtown massacre he’s open to limited gun control including the banning of high-capacity ammunition.
Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas): Castro’s twin brother, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, stole the spotlight as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Now Joaquín Castro has landed on NBC Latino’s list of 10 politicians to watch for in 2013. Castro is a graduate of Harvard Law School who focused on education during his five-term tenure in the Texas state legislature.

Senate Ceremonial Swearing-in 

Jan 3, 2013 

U.S. Capitol | Old Senate Chamber

Vice President Biden held a ceremonial swearing-in ceremony with newly-elected and re-elected senators. The event happens at the start of each Congress in the Old Senate Chamber. The official swearing-in ceremony took place earlier in the Senate chambers on the opening day of the 113th Congress.



Digest for H.Res. 5


113th Congress, 1st Session

H.Res. 5

Rules Package for the 113th Congress

Date  January 2, 2013 (113th Congress, 1st Session)

Staff Contact Kimberly Betz





On Thursday, January 3, 2013, the House is scheduled to adopt H. Res. 5 – House Rules for the 113th Congress. At the beginning of a Congress, the House must not only constitute itself, but must also approve rules. 


A newly elected House typically adopts the rules of the previous Congress with specific amendments. The proposed rules are offered in the form of a House resolution, which is considered under “general parliamentary law” which is interpreted to include the rules of the previous Congress (CRS RL 30725).







H. Res. 5 provides that the Rules of the 112th Congress are the Rules of the 113th Congress, with the following amendments and orders: 



  1. The frequency of committee activity reports is reduced from four times per Congress to two times per Congress, and end of session reports are allowed through January 2 of each year.
  2. The Chair is authorized to reduce the time from five minutes to not less than two minutes for a vote after a quorum call in the Committee of the Whole, and the Speaker is authorized to reduce the time for a vote on any question under consideration by the Committee of the Whole.
  3. The jurisdiction of the Committee on Homeland Security is clarified to include general management of the Department of Homeland Security. The jurisdiction of the Committee on Natural Resources is clarified to reflect terminology used by Departments of State and Interior.
  4. The current nepotism rule is expanded to prohibit Members from employing their grandchildren.
  5. Restrictions on the use of private aircraft by House members are amended to conform to Senate rules. Members are allowed to pay their pro rata share of a flight based on the fair market value of the flight, and may use personal or official funds to do so.
  6. The requirement for printing Member Financial Disclosures is eliminated, due to the online disclosure requirement under the STOCK Act.
  7. The prohibition on any former Members, former officers, or spouses who are registered lobbyists from accessing House exercise facilities is continued.
  8. The provisions in H. Res. 451 (110th Congress) directing the Committee on Ethics to empanel investigative subcommittees within 30 days after a Member is indicted or criminal charges are filed are continued.
  9. Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would limit the ability of the House in considering recommendations from the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) are eliminated.
  10. Section 306 of the Budget Act (which prohibits consideration of legislation within the Budget Committee’s jurisdiction unless referred to or reported by the Budget Committee) is clarified to only apply to bills and joint resolutions, and not to simple or concurrent resolutions.
  11. Section 303 point of order (requiring adoption of budget resolution before consideration of budget-related legislation) is applicable to text made in order as an original bill by a special rule.
  12. The Committee of the Whole is prevented from rising to report a bill that exceeds the 302(b) subcommittee allocations as estimated by the Budget Committee.
  13. The current House Budget Resolution spending authority will be in effect until a budget for FY14 is adopted.
  14. The Spending Reduction Accounts provided in appropriations bills are continued, allowing Members to rescind funds in the bill under consideration via the amendment process. The overall discretionary spending cap would remain unaffected.
  15. The Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Affairs are allowed up to seven subcommittees each, and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is allowed up to six subcommittees.
  16. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is authorized to continue litigation to enforce a subpoena against the Attorney General regarding the “Fast and Furious” incidents.
  17. The following entities are reauthorized: Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, House Democracy Partnership, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, and the Office of Congressional Ethics.
  18. The Speaker is allowed to recognize Members for the reading of the Constitution on any legislative day through January 15, 2013.
  19. The Speaker is allowed to reduce votes on all motions to recommit to not less than 5 minutes.
  20. For any bill reported by a committee, the accompanying report must include an estimate of the number of directed rule-makings in the accompanying legislation.
  21. Committee reports must include provisions of current law that surround modifications if doing so is useful to enable the intent and effect of the amendment to be clearly understood.
  22. Legislative counsel and others who draft legislation are required to include parallel citations to U.S. Code when they are available.
  23. Any standing committee of the House may request GAO to complete an analysis of legislation referred to that committee to assess whether it creates duplicative or overlapping federal programs. Bill reports must disclose the establishment of any known duplicative federal program.
  24. Budget resolutions are required to contain information about the historical and projected growth of means-tested and non-means-tested direct spending.
  25. Miscellaneous technical and conforming amendments.




On January 5, 2011, the House passed H. Res. 5, the House Rules for the 112th Congress, by a vote of 240-191.



 House rules for 112th House of Representatives


 House Calendar for 113th congress

 House Rules Changes: Sunlight's Proposals for the 113th Congress

Congress runs on rules. With the upcoming changeover from the 112th to the 113th Congress, the House of Representatives will adopt new regulations that innervate every aspect of legislative life. The last time it did this, in 2010, the House set the stage for greater openness and transparency in the lower chamber.  At that time, Sunlight issued a series of recommendations, some of which were adopted. The House of Representatives made significant progress toward ensuring the people's house belongs to the people, from the new transparency portal docs.house.gov to expanded video coverage of House proceedings to retaining the Office of Congressional Ethics.
In advance of the 113th Congress, we're issuing an updated set of transparency recommendations, each of which would mark a significant step towards increased transparency.

Audit and Create an Index of House Information
The House of Representatives creates and holds many documents and data sets. But with so many entities responsible for receiving and generating information, it is not clear to Members, staff, or the public what information is held by the House, who is responsible for it, and whether it can be made available to the public. Over time, there have been some attempts to address this issue. For example, House Rule II requires the Clerk to list all reports any office or Department is required to make to Congress -- and legislation is pending to make all those reports centrally available. The Sunlight Foundation has made a list of all the ethics information that's available from the legislative resource center, a task already performed in the Senate by the Secretary of the Senate.
Each congress, the House of Representatives should undertake an audit of the documents or other information that it holds, who is responsible for the information, the format in which it is stored, and where and how it can be obtained by the public. The House undertook a related effort in 1992 as memorialized in S. Pub. 102-20. The results of this biannual audit should be published online as an Index to House Information.

Adopt a chamber-wide presumption in favor of public access
As part of the rules package for the 112th Congress, the House decided that online publication of documents satisfy certain rules requirements for distribution of publications to all members of Congress. The House also charged the Committee on House Administration with the responsibility to establish and maintain standards for making documents publicly available in electronic form, and allowed Members of Congress to use electronic devices to access information the House floor. Altogether, this illustrates a trend towards online access to legislative information by everyone anywhere, including on the floor of the House.
Even with these changes, requests for access to legislative documents or information held by Congress are still being rejected or made unduly difficult. Often times access is denied simply because there is no institutional mandate to do so, and inertia trumps transparency. The House should strike a better balance that addresses the public's right to know while identifying circumstances where non-disclosure is appropriate, such as internal deliberative process, national security, or personal privacy.
The House should adopt a rule creating a rebuttable presumption in favor of public access to all congressionally-held information. Members, committee and leadership offices, legislative support offices, and (when working on House issues) legislative support agencies should be encouraged to make information available to a requester unless there is a strong, clearly articulable reason that outweighs the public's interest in access. In addition, a response to a requester should be timely, and information should be made available to a requester in the format that is requested unless doing so is not practical.
The House should also require the proactive online publication of information that is already available to the public, including historical information that's stored in electronic form. It should continue to work to create open data standards for the publication of machine-readable information (including bulk access) and formalize the Bulk Data Task Force.

Centralize the Timely Announcement of Committee Activities
In the last rules package, the House required committees to announce hearings one week in advance and committee meetings three days in advance of their occurrence, with notices required to be made available to the public in electronic form. While many committees have complied with the spirit as well as the letter of this rule, some committees publish notices as PDFs on their webpages, which are difficult to electronically discover and defeat their role as a "public notice." We applaud the House's efforts to "develop a unique application to create and publish the Committee Legislative Calendars," as described in a RFP, and hope that it will ultimately resolve the issue.
We suggest the House publish all committee events in a central location in a structured data format and require committees to announce all hearings and committee meetings as soon as they are scheduled. The Senate already does this, and it is our understanding that a comprehensive calendar is also available internally in the House, perhaps through the press gallery. Because House committee activities are required to be published in the Daily Digest, we suggest that the Clerk or another appropriate office be tasked with gathering and republishing committee activities on an appropriate centralized website until such system as is under construction comes online.

Ensure Webcasting of Committee Hearings
The House as part of its rules package for the 112th Congress required committees to webcast their hearings "to the maximum extent practicable." This has been a tremendous success, with all committees but one making nearly 100% of their activities available online. The exception was the Appropriations Committee, which only webcast 30% of its hearings during the time we monitored.
When we asked why its hearings were not webcast, the Appropriations Committee spokesperson responded:
"Whenever logistically possible, the main committee room - which is equipped with webcast and video capabilities - is used for hearings and mark-ups. The Committee schedules rooms for hearings and mark ups based upon many factors, including but not limited to: space availability, accessibility for members and the public, physical proximity to the house floor to accommodate voting schedules, and room size. Committee hearing rooms are also used for a variety of other purposes such as meetings and briefings. In addition, we allow any credentialed media organization to tape and/or record our open hearings and mark-ups, no matter which room is being used."
The committee was unwilling to request a camera be brought into its subcommittee room to cover its activities, to use a room already equipped with a camera, or to make use of another space in the Capitol that was appropriately equipped. We believe this violates the spirit and the letter of the rule, and based upon the performance of all the other committees, that webcasting is not an unreasonable burden.
We suggest that the rule be tweaked slightly to require webcasts "except when impracticable." The purpose is to make clear that all efforts should be made to have webcasts except when physically or technologically impossible, and that inconvenience is an insufficient reason for failure to webcast proceedings.

Retain the Office of Congressional Ethics
The Office of Congressional Ethics is the House's independent ethics watchdog. It provides a valuable service and should be retained intact. Ultimately, it should be placed on a firmer footing, to guarantee its continued presence as a vital force for oversight.

Fix Lobbying Disclosure Forms
While it is possible to track who is lobbying Congress by the filing entity, it is not possible to track each lobbyist, even though all lobbyists have a unique identifier. The House Rules should require the publication of lobbyist unique identifiers in the lobbying disclosure datasets released by the House of Representatives.

Online Media Accreditation
Journalists from online media are still having difficulty becoming accredited by the House or Senate Press Galleries (see, for example, this article). It is time to revisit the rules so that more people engaging in journalism can become accredited.

Require 72 Hours Online for Bills
The House of Representatives made significant progress when it adopted a 3-legislative-day rule under which all legislation must be published online prior to consideration on the floor of the House. To implement the rule, the House created the innovative transparency portal docs.house.gov and also recognized that information published online can be an official version of a document. These are major steps forward and should be applauded.
However, 3-legislative-days is not the same as 72 hours, and in practice can be as short as 24 hours. We believe that the original pledge of 72 hours should be fully implemented.

Create Mechanisms to Coordinate Transparency Efforts
Like many large institutions, responsibility for work on a particular issue is often spread out over many offices on the hill. This is particularly true for transparency issues, where leadership, committees, personal offices, and legislative support offices and agencies each have a small part. Unsurprisingly, efforts to coordinate among these offices are difficult, and institution-wide awareness of what's going on is hard to come by. To improve coordination and awareness,  we suggest the House consider the following steps.

Transparency Ombudsman
The House of Representatives has key staff responsible for the needs of the chamber. In addition to major support offices such as the Clerk, Sergeant-At-Arms, and Chief Administrative Officer, there's also offices for the Chaplain, Historian, General Counsel, and Inspector General. Helping to make the House more transparent is a task that spans several of these offices, and is also the responsibility of leadership and several committees. But like most institutions, this diffusion of responsibility means that there is no central point of contact for congressional offices trying to be more transparent, or for those outside the institution to figure out who to contact.
We suggest that the House consider creating a transparency ombudsman. The Ombudsman's responsibilities would include encouraging collaboration and information sharing among those responsible for different transparency efforts inside the House, to serve as a resource for those inside the House who wish to adopt best practices, to be a primary point of contact for those seeking information from the House, and generally to facilitate a more open and transparent Congress.

Advisory Committee on Public Access to Information
The House's efforts to improve transparency are intended to be of benefit to other offices within Congress, co-equal branches of government, the public at large, journalists, academics, and others. There is no regular forum, however, where interested parties can get together and talk with representatives of congress about how to best meet everyone's needs in the most efficient and effective manner.
We suggest that the House create an advisory committee (along the lines of the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress) that provides advice and recommendations to the House regarding public access to information.

Fix Oversight of Legislative Support Agencies
The Joint Committee on the Library and the Joint Committee on Printing are responsible for coordinating oversight with the Senate over the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office. Unfortunately, JCP and JCL only met once for 5 minutes in the 112th Congress, no longer have their own websites, and from a public perspective are effectively moribund. It's also our understanding that there's no dedicated staff within the Committee on House Administration that staff each of these joint committees.
In the past, these committees provided effective guidance and oversight for legislative support agencies, which are responsible for making much of the work of Congress (and the government as a whole) available to the American people. Now, with the exception of infrequent but helpful CHA oversight hearings, much of the public-facing oversight work is performed by the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee at its annual hearings, which are not webcast and are held in rooms too small to allow all interested members of the public to attend. In addition, we have found that different messages are sometimes communicated by the legislative support agencies to their respective House and Senate oversight committees, which apparently impedes the ability to effectively oversee and direct their functions.
We recommend that the House explore ways to reinvigorate oversight of the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office. It should particularly focus on making sure that Congress has sufficient capacity to effectively ensure that these agencies are properly performing their roles of making information available to the public, and that the oversight process in performed in a way that the public can be properly engaged.
It also may be wise to look more broadly about creating a Chief Technology Officer for the House of Representatives, whose office would look at campus-wide issues, including technology needs within the House as well as the legislative support agencies. This centralizing role has been recommended before, and is discussed in a September 27, 2006 Committee on House Administration hearing entitled "Hearing on IT Assessment: A Ten-Year Vision for Technology in the House."

Require House Documents to Be Available Online
In an earlier recommendation we suggested that House documents generally be made available to the public online. In this section, we identify several kinds of documents that specifically should be directed to be available online in appropriate formats.
  • Dear Colleague letters should be made available to the public automatically except when doing so would endanger the security of the House or the originating office has requested otherwise. These widely-distributed documents often are made publicly available and are a helpful window into Capitol Hill. In addition, their public availability will allow technologists to build new tools to help make this flood of information more digestible to those working for Congress.
  • Widely-distributed Congressional Research Service reports should be made available to the public by the Clerk's office. Thousands of CRS Reports are available online, and many more can be purchased through third party-vendors. These frequently-cited documents can help explain important policy issues to the public, and occasionally could benefit from public review for completeness and accuracy. However, they are not available to the public in a timely way, and public access is spotty. There is a bipartisan resolution pending in the 112th Congress (H Res. 727) that addresses all the important aspects of making these reports freely available to the public. It is time to level the playing field and give everyone equal access to them.
  • House Ethics Documents maintained by the Clerk for public access should all be available online. We've conducted an inventory, which is something the Clerk should do. To the extent data is drawn from or stored in a database, it should be online as well. In particular, the House Statement of Disbursements should be published as a dataset and not just a PDF.
  • Publish Post Employment Notifications whenever a Member of Congress is negotiating for employment, not just later when an actual conflict arises.
  • Annual, semi-annual and other regularly recurring reports from the legislative support offices (e.g. the Clerk, Chief Administrative Office, Sergeant-at-Arms, etc.) all should be made available online as they are issued. While some legislative support offices do an excellent job of publishing their reports online, for example, the CAO, other offices do not publish their reports online and refuse requests for copies. Access to this information makes it possible for the public to have confidence that the House is being operated effectively and efficiently, and also for academics, journalists, and others to make recommendations for improvement.
  • Require transcripts of committee activities to be made available to the public within 3 weeks. The Senate (Rule XXVI) requires "each committee and subcommittee shall make publicly available through the Internet a video recording, audio recording, or transcript of any meeting not later than 21 business days after the meeting occurs," except for meetings closed in accordance with the rules. While many House committees are good at posting video from proceedings, some are not. In addition, persons who are hearing impaired cannot understand videos without closed captions, and computers are not sufficiently sophisticated to be able to reliably transform audio into text for processing. While committees may still wish to release finalized transcripts that may take more than 3 weeks to complete, committees should be directed to publish online non-final transcripts within 21 days.
  • Publicly release individual reports filed by congressional delegations (CODELs) that contain expenditures, the reasons for the expenditures, and the members of the CODEL within a timely period.

 Sunlight Foundation

Senate Rules Changes: Sunlight's Proposals for the 113th Congress

by

The United States Senate is a creature of its rules. Through its standing rules, laws and resolutions, precedents, and the consent of its members, the upper chamber carefully controls how legislation can be promulgated and debate can take place.

Unlike the House of Representatives, which must vote on its rules every Congress, the Senate rarely reconsiders its standing rules in their entirety. An opportunity may arise, however, with the current debate over changing how the filibuster works. Here are Sunlight's major recommendations for updating the Senate's rules.

Audit and Create an Index of Senate Information

The Senate creates and holds many documents and data sets. But with so many entities responsible for receiving and generating information, it is not clear to Members, staff, or the public what information is held by the Senate, who is responsible for it, and whether it can be made available to the public. Some thoughtful efforts have been undertaken to consider these issues. For example, legislation is pending to require GPO to create a central repository of all reports any office or Department is required to make to Congress. The Senate already compiles a list of ethics reports required to be filed in the Senate. And GPO has made efforts to compile a repository of official Senate documents, although its efforts are hindered by lack of access to the information.

The Senate should undertake an audit of the documents or other information that it holds, who is responsible for the information, the format in which it is stored, and where and how it can be obtained by the public. The House and Senate jointly undertook a related effort in 1992 as memorialized in S. Pub. 102-20. The audit should occur each congress, and be published online as an Index to Senate Information.

Adopt a Chamber-Wide Presumption in Favor of Public Access

The Senate should adopt a rule creating a rebuttable presumption in favor of public access to all congressionally-held information. Members, committee and leadership offices, legislative support offices, and (when working on Senate issues) legislative support agencies should be encouraged to make information available to a requester unless there is a strong, clearly articulable reason that outweighs the public's interest in access. In addition, a response to a requester should be timely, and information should be made available to a requester in the format that is requested unless doing so is not practical.

The Senate should also require the proactive online publication of information that is already available to the public, including historical information that's stored in electronic form. The Senate should make a particular effort to make legislation, including amendments, available online in a timely fashion, perhaps adopting the successful model used by the House, docs.house.gov. The Senate should also work with the House to create open data standards for the publication of machine-readable information (including bulk access to that data).

Improve Senate Administrative and Ethics-Reporting Transparency

All public documents held by the Secretary of the Senate for public review should be published online. A list of those documents is available here. Currently, the documents can only be obtained by printing them during a visit to the Senate Office of Public Records on Capitol Hill.

The Senate should publish a staff directory that includes each staffer's name, job title, areas of responsibility, and the main phone number and address for the office. This information is already available through pay services run by third-party vendors. It should be available to the public as well.

"Dear Colleague" letters are one way that a Senator communicates with the rest of the Senate. They're usually used to indicate support for legislation or other policy initiatives, and are often shared with the public or the press. All of these letters should be made available online on a central website by default unless an originating office decides to specifically exclude one of the letters.

Senators should be required to file their campaign finance disclosures directly and electronically with the Federal Election Commission. Currently, Senators are required to file with the Senate, which requires the FEC to go through these documents (often handwritten) and re-key the data. This is costly and causes delays in public disclosure.

The Senate should create an independent ethics watchdog along the lines of the Office of Congressional Ethics. The OCE has been an invaluable addition to the ethics process in the House, and will bring additional transparency and accountability to the Senate.

Improve Public Access to Legislative Information

Information regarding legislation pending in the Senate is made available on THOMAS and Congress.gov, but it is not made available in the way that computers can most easily process it -- in bulk. The Senate should join with the House in requiring that legislative data be made available in bulk, and should require that all amendments are online in real-time.

The Senate should publish its semi-annual reports on its internal expenditures online as a downloadable database, and not just as a PDF. Doing so would make the information more accessible to the public and facilitate reuse of the data.

Improve Public Understanding of Legislative Issues Considered by the Senate

Widely-distributed Congressional Research Service reports should be made available to the public by the Secretary of the Senate's office. Thousands of CRS Reports are available online, and many more can be purchased through third party-vendors. These frequently-cited documents can help explain important policy issues to the public, and occasionally could benefit from public review for completeness and accuracy. However, they are not available to the public in a timely way, and public access is spotty.

Legislation to this effect has frequently been introduced in the Senate (such as S Res 118) that addresses all the important aspects of making these reports freely available to the public. It is time to level the playing field and give everyone equal access.

All reports submitted to the Senate should be made available online, except in limited circumstances. The Senate should look to the draft Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act for guidance on implementation.
Annual, semi-annual and other regularly recurring reports from the legislative support offices (e.g. the Secretary of the Senate, Sergeant at Arms, Parliamentarian) all should be made available online as they are issued. While some legislative support offices do an excellent job of publishing their reports online, other offices have further to go. Access to this information makes it possible for the public to have confidence that the Senate is being operated effectively and efficiently, and also for academics, journalists, and others to make recommendations for improvement.

The Senate publication "The Constitution of the United States: Analysis and Interpretation," available on the Senate's intranet but not available to the public except in a printed format, should be made available online as it is updated. This legal treatise that explains the US Constitution as it has been interpreted by the US Supreme Court is an invaluable resource and should be more widely available to the public.

Improve Access to Information about Senate Proceedings and Legislation

All proposed amendments in the Senate should be available online in a useful format. Unfortunately, while the House releases this information to the public via the THOMAS/ Congress.gov website, the Senate only makes amendments available through the Congressional Record, which is more difficult to access and parse. This information shouldn't be buried.

All information on presidential nominations filed with the Senate should be available online, except for personally identifiable information (such as home addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers.)
The US House has incrementally moved toward having all legislation available online before floor consideration (even if the House sometimes waives these rules). The Senate, however, has made little to no progress. Legislation, including final committee reports, should be available online for 72 hour prior to a final Senate vote. While forcing the Senate to consider legislation in a particular way will necessarily be tricky (especially in a chamber that functions through unanimous consent), far more should be done to improve public access to legislation prior to votes.

Improve Committee Activity Disclosure

All committee and subcommittee hearings and meetings should be webcast except when logistically impossible.

All markups should be available to the public at least 24 hours prior to consideration by the committee or subcommittee. To be considered as "publicly available," they should be online.

Senate committees should write and publish oversight plans, with annually update reports. The House already has this requirement and it works well. See House Rule XI(d).

Create Mechanisms to Coordinate Transparency Efforts

Like many large institutions, responsibility for work on a particular issue is often spread out over many offices on the hill. This is particularly true for transparency issues, where leadership, committees, personal offices, and legislative support offices and agencies each have a small part.
Unsurprisingly, efforts to coordinate among these offices are difficult, and institution-wide awareness of what's going on is hard to come by. To improve coordination and awareness, we suggest the Senate consider the following steps.

Transparency Ombudsman

The Senate has key staff responsible for the needs of the chamber. Helping to make the Senate more transparent is a task that spans several of these offices, and is also the responsibility of leadership and several committees. But like most institutions, this diffusion of responsibility means that there is no central point of contact for congressional offices trying to be more transparent, or for those outside the institution to figure out who to contact.
We suggest that the Senate consider creating a transparency ombudsman. The Ombudsman's responsibilities would include encouraging collaboration and information sharing among those responsible for different transparency efforts inside the Senate, to serve as a resource for those inside the Senate who wish to adopt best practices, to be a primary point of contact for those seeking information from the Senate, and generally to facilitate a more open and transparent Congress.

Advisory Committee on Public Access to Information
The Senate's efforts to improve transparency are intended to be of benefit to other offices within Congress, co-equal branches of government, the public at large, journalists, academics, and others. There is no regular forum, however, where interested parties can get together and talk with representatives of congress about how to best meet everyone's needs in the most efficient and effective manner.

We suggest that the Senate create an advisory committee (along the lines of the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress) that provides advice and recommendations to the Senate regarding public access to information.

Fix Oversight of Legislative Support Agencies

The Joint Committee on the Library and the Joint Committee on Printing are responsible for coordinating oversight with the House over the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office. Unfortunately, JCP and JCL only met once for 5 minutes in the 112th Congress, no longer have their own websites, and from a public perspective are effectively moribund.

In the past, these committees provided effective guidance and oversight for legislative support agencies, which are responsible for making much of the work of Congress (and the government as a whole) available to the American people. Now, much of the public-facing oversight work is performed by the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee. In addition, we have found that different messages are sometimes communicated by the legislative support agencies to their respective House and Senate oversight committees, which apparently impedes the ability to effectively oversee and direct their functions.

We recommend that the Senate explore ways to reinvigorate oversight of the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office. It should particularly focus on making sure that Congress has sufficient capacity to effectively ensure that these agencies are properly performing their roles of making information available to the public, and that the oversight process in performed in a way that the public can be properly engaged.

It also may be wise to look more broadly about creating a Chief Technology Officer for the United States Senate, whose office would look at campus-wide issues, including technology needs within the Senate as well as the legislative support agencies.

Appendix

We have more recommendations for improving Senate activities, but they are best accomplished through means other than Senate rules changes. For our recommendations in the House for the 113th Congress, please go here.

113th Congress begins


House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, enters the House of Representatives chamber, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, after surviving a roll call vote in the newly convened 113th Congress. He is escorted by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Calif., and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Md. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, enters the House of Representatives chamber, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, after surviving a roll call vote in the newly convened 113th Congress. He is escorted by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Calif., and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Md. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) 
 

Updated at
1:05 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House and Senate ushered in a new Congress Thursday, re-electing embattled Republican John Boehner speaker and hailing one of its own senators who returned a year after being felled by a stroke.

The 113th Congress convened at 12 noon EST, the constitutionally mandated time, with pomp, pageantry and politics, on both sides of the Capitol.
Boehner, bruised after weeks with his fractious caucus and negotiations with the White House on the fiscal cliff, won a second, two-year term as leader with 220 votes. Despite grumbling in the GOP ranks, just 10 Republicans voted for someone other than Boehner.

Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi got 192 votes.

In the Senate, Vice President Joe Biden swore in 12 new members elected in November, lawmakers who won another term and South Carolina Republican Tim Scott. The former House member was tapped by Gov. Nikki Haley to fill the remaining term of Sen. Jim DeMint, who resigned to head a Washington think tank.

Applause from members and the gallery marked every oath-taking. Looking on was former Vice President Walter Mondale.

 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., front row, center, poses with other female House members on the steps of the House on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, prior to the official opening of the 113th Congress . (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Shortly before the session, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who had been absent for the past year while recovering from a stroke, slowly walked up the 45 steps to the Senate, with Biden nearby and the Senate leaders at the top of the stairs to greet him.
“A courageous man,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Members of the Illinois congressional delegation and senators stood on the steps.

As he entered the building, resting on a cane, Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., helped Kirk take off his coat. The senator said he was glad to be back.

While the dozens of eager freshmen are determined to change Washington, they face the harsh reality of another stretch of divided government. The traditions come against the backdrop of a mean season that closed out an angry election year.

A deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” of big tax increases and spending cuts split the parties in New Year’s Day votes, and the House’s failure to vote on a Superstorm Sandy aid package before adjournment prompted GOP recriminations against the leadership.

“There’s a lot of hangover obviously from the last few weeks of this session into the new one, which always makes a fresh start a lot harder,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said.




Retiring Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. talks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, prior to the start of the 113th Congress. Joseph Kennedy III is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday, replacing Frank. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
 
For all the change of the next Congress, the new bosses are the same as the old bosses.

President Barack Obama secured a second term in the November elections, and Democrats tightened their grip on the Senate for a 55-45 edge in the new two-year Congress, ensuring that Reid will remain in charge.

Republicans maintained their majority in the House but will have a smaller advantage, 233-200. Former Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Illinois seat and the one held by South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, the state’s next senator, will be the two vacancies.

Boehner, R-Ohio, has faced a bruising few weeks with his fractious GOP caucus but seemed poised to win another term as speaker. He mollified angry Republicans from New York and New Jersey on Wednesday with the promise of a vote Friday on $9 billion of the storm relief package and another vote on the remaining $51 billion on Jan. 15.

The GOP members quickly abandoned their chatter about voting against the speaker.

The new Congress still faces the ideological disputes that plagued the dysfunctional 112th Congress, one of the least productive in more than 60 years. Tea party members within the Republican ranks insist on fiscal discipline in the face of growing deficits and have pressed for deep cuts in spending as part of a reduced role for the federal government. Democrats envision a government with enough resources to help the less fortunate and press for the wealthiest to pay more in taxes.

“We can only hope for more help,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who was re-elected in November. “Any time you have new members arriving you have that expectation of bringing fresh ideas and kind of a vitality that is needed. We hope that they’re coming eager to work hard and make some difficult decisions and put the country first and not be bogged down ideologically.”



Rep.-elect Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, as she poses with other female House members prior to the official opening of the 113th Congress. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
The next two months will be crucial, with tough economic issues looming. Congress put off for just eight weeks automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs that were due to begin with the new year. The question of raising the nation’s borrowing authority also must be decided. Another round of ugly negotiations between Obama and Congress is not far off.

There are 12 newly elected senators — eight Democrats, three Republicans and one independent, former Maine Gov. Angus King, who will caucus with the Democrats. They will be joined by Scott, the first black Republican in decades, who was tapped by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to fill the remaining term of Sen. Jim DeMint. The conservative DeMint resigned to lead the Heritage Foundation think tank.

In a sign of some diversity for the venerable body, the Senate will have three Hispanics — Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and one of the new members, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas. There will be 20 women in the 100-member chamber, the highest number yet.

At least one longtime Democrat, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, will be departing in a few weeks, nominated by Obama to be secretary of state. That opens the door to former Republican Sen. Scott Brown, the only incumbent senator to lose in November’s elections, to possibly make a bid to return to Washington.

Eighty-two freshmen join the House — 47 Democrats and 35 Republicans. Women will total 81 in the 435-member body — 62 Democrats and 19 Republicans.

In the Senate, Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell are negotiating possible changes in the rules as lawmakers face a bitter partisan fight over filibusters, according to a Senate Democratic leadership aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about private matters.



House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, as she poses with female House members prior to the officially opening of the 113th Congress. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Reid has complained that Republicans filibuster too often and has threatened to impose strict limits with a simple majority vote. That step could set off retaliatory delays and other maneuvers by Republicans, who argue that they filibuster because Reid often blocks them from offering amendments.

The aide said Reid was preserving the option of making changes with a simple majority vote.

'Shame on you, Congress': Republicans in Sandy-hit areas blast House GOP for delay on relief


 
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticizes Congress for delaying relief funds for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
The House GOP came under a blistering bipartisan assault Wednesday for punting on Sandy relief, with Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie complaining he couldn’t even get Speaker John Boehner to return his calls.

Fallout from the surprise vote pullback on a $60 billion aid package mounted by the hour with cries of outrage and calls for revenge.

By late afternoon, it seemed like the onslaught was having an effect. The House scheduled a Friday vote on $9 billion in flood insurance funds, to be followed by a Jan. 15 vote on another $51 billion in assistance.

It was unclear if the larger allocation would pass – or if the belated vote would mollify the New York and New Jersey politicians who unleashed unusually personal attacks against Boehner and other House Republicans.

House to vote on Sandy funding Friday, placating outraged lawmakers

Earlier, New York Rep. Pete King said his Republican colleagues had exposed a bias against the blue states of the Northeast and that anyone from the area who donates money to them “should have his head examined.”
“They can’t count on any vote from me now,” he said on MSNBC.

Christie, who has been touted as a possible White House contender, put the blame for the delay squarely on Boehner and marveled that he called the Ohioan four times before he would take his call.

“Shame on you, Congress,” he said, adding that he has received no explanation for the “disappointing and disgusting” decision.

The $60 billion request for assistance for to victims of Superstorm Sandy has been passed by the Senate, and House supporters were pushing for a Tuesday night vote.


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House Speaker John Boehner had quietly decided the House should not pass billions more in spending for Sandy relief, stunning both Democrats and Republicans from the storm-ravaged region. But after being subjected to intense pressure, a vote on some emergency aid will now be held on Friday. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
Instead, King said, Boehner “just walked off” the floor and had an aide break the news that there would be no vote. The House adjourned on Wednesday without considering the measure; lawmakers are back Thursday for an hour before they gavel in the 113th Congress.

While some Republicans have criticized the aid package for funds not directly linked to Sandy, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the speaker is “committed to getting this bill passed this month.”
That promise didn’t quiet the fury.

“Totally obscene,” said Tom Jordan, a former firefighter whose house in Rockaway, Queens, was flooded by the storm that killed 120 people and damaged almost 400,000 homes.

“They’re quibbling about $60 billion? That’s nothing as far as the federal budget goes. They should come down here and see what the beach looks like. They want to wait? We need repairs before the next hurricane season.”
Rep. Michael Grimm, a Republican who represents parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn, called the delay “a personal betrayal.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand dared Boehner to visit Staten Island, then added that she doubts “he has the dignity nor the guts to do it.”

First Read: 'Betrayal': Congress punts on Sandy recovery funding, infuriating local lawmakers

“They’re a bunch of idiots,” Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, a Conservative, said of House Republicans. “There’s no other logical reason they’d be doing this.”

 
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Those hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy say they are close to the breaking point, their faith in government flagging. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

In a joint statement, Christie and New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, accused the house of a “dereliction of duty.”

“When American citizens are in need we come to their aid,” they said. “That tradition was abandoned in the House last night.”

But it was King who really let his Republican colleagues have it.
“The fact is that the dismissive attitude that was shown last night toward New York, New Jersey and Connecticut typifies, I believe, a strain in the Republican Party,” he said on the House floor.

“I can’t imagine that type of indifference, that cavalier attitude being shown to any other part of the country,” he added.

“We cannot believe this cruel knife in the back was delivered to our region… This is not the United States of America! This should not be the Republican Party. This should not be the Republican leadership.”

Although he said he is not thinking of switching parties, King suggested New Yorkers should hit House Republicans who don’t support the bill where it hurts – in the campaign coffer.

“These people have no problem finding New York when it comes to raising money. They only have a problem when it comes to allocating,” he fumed.
“If this is not delivered and very quickly…anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to congressional Republicans after this should have their head examined,” he added on MSNBC.


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Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., blasts Speaker John Boehner and Congress for delaying action on a bill that would provide aid toward Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
Boehner is supposed to meet with Republican members of the New York and New Jersey delegations on Wednesday to reassure them that the relief bill will be passed.

But King expressed skepticism about a quick vote, noting a majority of House Republicans don’t support the bill and Washington will be soon be preoccupied with the inauguration and the State of the Union.

President Obama called on the House to bring the bill to a vote immediately and “pass it without delay for our fellow Americans.”

It’s unclear what impact the vote delay with have. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency testified this month that it had enough funding to “respond to the immediate needs.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) defended Boehner’s move, blaming the Senate for padding the relief package with non-essential funding.
“The Senate didn’t do their job. They sent us a bunch of pork, and then left town,” he said on “Fox and Friends.”

NBC News' Tom Curry and Frank Thorp contributed to this report.

'Field of Dreams' lives on: Sports facility for kids to be built at movie site


 
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The "Field of Dreams," a nearly 200-acre parcel of Iowa land made famous in the 1989 Kevin Costner film of the same name, will live on and give young people a lesson in life.

An investment group led by Oak Lawn, Iowa-based couple Denise and Mark Stillman closed the deal last week after more than two and a half years.
Denise Stillman on Wednesday recalled the moment she told her husband they should buy the property.

"[It was] over pizza by a swimming pool the night that he told me it was for sale. I said we should build a Cooperstown facility like that at the 'Field of Dreams' movie site," she recalled.

In the future, the site will be a sprawling complex built specifically for youth sports, including 24 baseball diamonds and 60 clubhouses.

"We're going to do things like build a summer camp where kids from the inner city came come to Iowa and learn about how to be a great human being through sports," she added.

Costner's 'favorite place on Earth'

There are some eerie coincidences between the film and the site's real-life purchase.

"We've actually talked about the similarity between the movie and real life except the tables are turned in the genders. The wife is that one that's proverbially the crazy one," Stillman said with a laugh.

She said she knew convincing her husband wouldn't be difficult, recalling their early days together in college at Bradley University.

"['Field of Dreams'] came out on tape and we watched it in the dorm and he cried, so I thought he was pretty OK," she said.

Stillman also has the support of actor Kevin Costner. She said the star lauded her effort and thanked her for keeping the dream alive.

"He just chuckled and said, 'I'm so glad that someone is saving that. It's my favorite place on Earth,'" Stillman said.

The first phase of the $40 million project should be complete in the spring of 2014. Stillman said youth baseball teams from as far away as California and Florida are already signed up to compete in tournaments.