From the office of House Republican Leader Johm Boehner:
House Republicans today launched a new effort to change the way Congress works, calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to schedule an immediate vote on five common-sense reforms that will bring greater transparency to the legislative process and make Congress more open and accountable to the people it serves. The House GOP congressional transparency initiative includes “read the bill” reform that would ensure all bills are posted online at least 72 hours before coming to a vote, a ban on “phantom amendments” being added to bills in secret after they pass committee, a resolution requiring the upcoming House-Senate health care negotiations to be open to the public, and other critical reforms.
“The American people are fed up with Congress tucking special-interest provisions into bills behind closed doors, secretly changing bills without a vote, and passing bills no one has read,” House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said. “This has happened for far too long, but never before has the need for reform been more apparent than in the past year under Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic majority. Americans are demanding change in the way Congress works. House Republicans are proposing a series of common-sense reforms to bring much-needed sunlight to the process by which bills become laws.”
Throughout the year, Washington Democrats have passed expensive and hugely consequential bills without any meaningful scrutiny, including a 1,073-page trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that was released at 10 p.m. the night before the vote, and a 1,200 page national energy tax bill that grew by 300 pages at 3 a.m. the morning of the vote. Earlier this month, Democrats made substantive changes to Speaker Pelosi’s 2,000 page government takeover of health care in the dark of night.