Want to Prevent Another AIG? Let the Sunshine In

The simple fact is that our elite government, all of them, suck to the high heavens as do their pals on Wall Street.

Tea Party, anyone?

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

The fact that Americans are mad as hell has not escaped the media or government. Indeed, it seems that everyone is racing to be first to tell the American people where to direct their rage.

Blame AIG! Those greedy bastards are already sucking us dry and giving our money to foreign banks, and then they take millions in bonuses for the very employees that precipitated this crisis in the first place.

Blame Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)! He wrote in a change to the stimulus bill that allowed the AIG bonuses to be paid.

Oh wait, no. Looks like we got that one backwards, so...

Blame Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner! He's the one that asked Dodd to change the stimulus bill, fearing that Dodd's amendment to prevent all bonuses being paid out to rescued bankers might expose the government to lawsuits.

Let's just blame President Barack Obama, because he doesn't look pissed off enough! Or because he's too pissed off!

All this anger is understandable, but it isn't helping us out of this crisis. This kind of infectious anger is an emotion that fosters putrefaction and corrosion. We need a cure, not a supplement. But most cures are costly, and the American body politic is running low on cash as well as political capital. Thankfully, the best antiseptic is cheap: sunshine.

So where do we turn for help but the Sunlight Foundation? This group has been working toward greater government transparency for years now, but they've recently renewed their push to have Congress actually read the bills they vote on.

Read The Bill from Sunlight Foundation on Vimeo.

Lisa Rosenberg, a Sunlight Foundation government affairs consultant, talked to BuzzFlash about their Read the Bill initiative, which proposes that all non-emergency legislation be available and posted online 72 hours before Congressional debate begins.

The list of rushed bills according to Sunlight is massive: the stimulus, the Wall Street bailout, FISA, the Fannie/Freddie bailout and more. And that's just the most recent history. Don't forget about the past eight years of tossing accountability like a hot potato between a pushy executive branch and a negligent legislature. Um, Iraq war resolution anyone? How about the PATRIOT Act? And while we're on the subject of eliminating civil liberties, who wants seconds?

According to Rosenberg, the AIG bonus situation shows why the status quo is "really problematic right now." If the 72-hour window was already in place, things would have been different with the bonus loophole.

"Someone would have found it and the outrage would have been directed at Congress at a time when they could have changed it," Rosenberg said. "Instead they're going to write a whole new bill [to tax the bonuses]. Congress hasn't learned from their mistakes."

The initiative was introduced in the last Congress, but it didn't go anywhere. Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) sponsored legislation that would require posting legislation on the Internet for 72 hours before vote consideration in 2007, but it died in the House Committee on Rules.

"It's on his radar," Rosenberg said of the possibility of Baird taking up the measure in the 111th Congress. She didn't have any immediate predictions for the initiative, but it's possible the infusion of fresh faces from the 2008 election cycle could break up some of the previous resistance.

"I think seniority has a lot more to do with it," she said. "Freshmen are more open to the idea."

Perhaps the most important outcome of this sort of legislation is the deflation of the moral high ground so many politicians stand on when they claim they didn't know what was in a particular bill after a controversy turns up. The argument goes that if lawmakers don't have enough time to read legislation before they are forced to vote on it, they shouldn't be held responsible for the dirty details. Plenty of lawmakers claim they want more time to read bills. But do they really want that kind of accountability?

"A lot of it is lip service," Rosenberg said, noting that "you'll see a lot of Republicans complain about not having time to read" legislation sponsored by Democrats, and vice-versa. On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons for Congress to let the bill die yet again.

"My best guess is a combination of a fear of really altering the way they've always done business," Rosenberg said, adding that there is also an "unfounded fear" that the 72-hour window would slow Congress down to a standstill.

Some lawmakers may be equating a loss of speed with a loss of force. Rosenberg offered a third reason why the initiative might encounter resistance: "Certain members think they have a lot more power when they can slip things into a bill at the last minute."

The argument can certainly be made that simply allowing enough time for a bill to be read doesn't guarantee it'll make it onto The New York Times Bestseller List. In other words, you can lead a lawmaker to legislation, but you can't make him read.

Thank goodness for that other cheap cure: the information superhighway. Turns out that if you put stuff up on the Internet, there's a good chance people will look at it. Some of those people won't have behinds to cover and donors (or, ahem... constituencies) to cater to.

Remember that it wasn't Congress or the White House or the Treasury that revealed the existence of the AIG bonuses. It was the fourth estate. If the information is there, someone will look at it.

So let us trade in our tirades for change. A frown makes a terrible umbrella, but if it weren't raining, we wouldn't need one. Let's use this anger for something more productive and let the sunshine in.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Learn more and sign the petition at the Sunlight Foundation's ReadTheBill.org.

Let The Sun Shine In......