Shining a Cyber-Light on Hidden Territory

The day after he was sworn in as House speaker, Newt Gingrich of Georgia announced the establishment of a congressional database system dubbed THOMAS--in honor of the country’s third president, Jefferson, who would have surely been something of a computer nerd today.

Since Gingrich’s January 1995 proclamation, a vast amount of legislative information has been hurled into cyberspace--bills, reports, the Congressional Record and more--to be browsed by government aficionados and plain old citizens alike.

To most observers, this an important step toward a more participatory democracy.

“Expanding the chance for the American people to provide input is very important,” said Rep. David Dreier, who chairs a GOP task force on committee reform that is attempting to slap Congress into shape for the upcoming information-drenched century.

Next week Dreier, a San Dimas Republican who has become Gingrich’s point man on internal House reforms, will issue a report that, among other things, calls for three important advances in bringing the House into cyberspace harmony.

He will call for standard document forms, a more centralized congressional database and more precise guidelines on what documents the House will open up to global computer-screen viewing.

But Dreier inhabits an institution that eyes such change warily, particularly when it comes to openness. His call to arms may leave many unmoved.

For not only will more information be more readily available to Internet browsers everywhere, but members of Congress will have to adjust to thousands--perhaps millions--of citizens poking with their home PCs into reports, transcripts, studies and proposed legislation that, heretofore, were virtually the privileged territory of the lobbyists and consultants who nest in committee rooms like somber birds of prey.

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Dreier’s proposals come as good news to people like Gary Ruskin, who heads the Congressional Accountability Project, a Ralph Nader-related government watchdog group.

In a recent missive to Dreier and Gingrich, Ruskin accused the Republican House and Senate leadership of following “in the same old discredited tradition of limited access to key legislative documents perfected under previous Democratic-controlled Congresses . . . that provides enormous advantage to Washington lobbyists while leaving the American people without real-time access to the core documents of our democracy.”

Ruskin went on to list 13 categories of documents that he and his ideological cohorts believe should be in the Internet pipeline. Most are noncontroversial: prepared testimony, voting records, amendments, Federal Election Commission reports, lobbyist disclosure reports and members’ financial disclosure reports.

More ticklish was Ruskin’s plea for drafts of bills called “committee prints” and “chairman’s marks” to be available on the ‘Net.

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Oftentimes, such early versions are available to lobbyists, who gain valuable insights into where a committee is heading on controversial issues. John Q. Citizen doesn’t have a clue.

Dreier’s upcoming recommendations do not fulfill all of Ruskin’s demands. But on the delicate issue of making early versions of bills available, the two are basically in sync.

“If it’s made available to lobbyists, it should be made available to the American people,” Dreier said.

Ruskin welcomed the decision, with a caveat: “It would be a substantial step forward--if it passes.”

And Dreier acknowledges that selling the idea to grizzled Congress veterans with a fondness for back-room coziness won’t be easy.

“If we can tap into expertise anywhere in the world, why don’t we take advantage of it as something beneficial, rather than [view it as] something that will crimp the style of some members who want to perpetuate the status quo,” argues Dreier.

An informal survey of major House committees confirmed this resistance to increasing the Internet’s reach into committee business.

For the record, the staffers said, bring it on. But under the cloak of anonymity, they told a different story.

“I haven’t heard much talk about going public with discussion drafts or chairman’s marks,” said an Appropriations Committee staff member. “I don’t think there is a great push to do that.”

Only in recent years have some of the more clubby committees agreed to open their doors to reporters during delicate legislative maneuverings. And the yen to let in more sunshine is virtually nonexistent.

“This has been an issue around here for years,” said the Appropriations Committee staffer. “And it’s never been resolved in a way that makes more of this stuff available.”