Politics

Victory for Read The Bill: Financial Reform edition

By Noah Kunin

Need some reading materials for the weekend? Do we have a recommendation for you! The consensus version of the massive financial system reform bill will be put online starting tomorrow. This is another great victory for the Read The Bill campaign – our unrelenting effort to makes sure Congress puts all bills online for 72 hours before a vote.

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) says that the entire bill will be online for “at least 68 hours” (with most parts of the bill online for much longer) before it is taken up for a vote in Congress. Rep. Frank has been chairing the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate versions of the bill.

We can’t stop here – Read The Bill is part of a larger Public=Online campaign to make sure all public data is online and in real-time. Help us make sure that putting bills online for 72 hours before a vote isn’t just the norm – it’s the law.

Some might say it’s early to claim victory on this bill. I disagree: it’s currently 4:12am on Friday so there simply won’t be a chance for this bill to be taken up over the weekend. We’re able to bring you this breaking news because we’ve been covering the conference committee since 9:45am on Thursday – and this is day seven of said committee. Hopefully you can appreciate my sanguineness. :)

Want to know how the final compromises went down? The complete archive of our coverage, including the final 19 hour marathon can be found below by replaying our live blog which you can find below the fold. If you want just the highlights you can find them in our Twitter account: @sunlightnetwork.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on June 25, 2010 (boomark / email).