House Resolution 554 asks Congress to Read the Bill

It's time for action, friends.

We (finally) have a bill introduced in the House of Representatives that will require legislation to be made public 72 hours before it is considered by Congress.

Now we need to make sure it passes.Right now, Congress doesn't actually read the legislation they vote on, and just as bad, we don't have the time to make our voice heard before a new law affects our lives. The status quo is wholly unacceptable, and now we have a way to start changing it.http://www.readthebill.org

By introducing House Resolution 554, the bipartisan sponsors Reps. Baird (D-WA) and Culberson (R-TX) have taken us one step closer toward greater transparency, and given us a chance to improve the dialogue between members of Congress and the people who elected them. But H.R. 554 has a long way to go before this straightforward fix becomes law.

For starters, it needs a lot more support in Congress. We've made it easy for you sign our petition and call your representative to ask him or her to co-sponsor the bill. It's simple and important. Our goal is to deliver 15,000 signatures of support for the bill before Congress recesses in August.Take a moment to sign, call and share the petition with others.

It's a small action we can each take to raise awareness of how mind-numbingly absurd it is that Congress doesn't read its legislation, and ultimately make Congress more accountable to us.http://www.readthebill.org

This is beyond a small procedural change, friends. There are many reasons having 72 hours of public notice prior to Congress's consideration of a bill is important, and here are a couple examples we found:

Most citizens would have supported amending the economic stimulus bill to remove the provision allowing AIG executives to receive retroactive bonuses - if only they had known.

The average person probably would have preferred to let the judicial system work rather than have Congress give immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that participated in a controversial wiretapping scheme.

Workers hoping to retire on their 401(k) investments might have liked to have some serious analysis of whether credit default swaps ought to be regulated. We know how that worked out.

And, just about everyone benefits from mandating time to check for questionable and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

In these cases (and many others), only a handful of congressional staffers and possibly a few well-connected lobbyists knew exactly what was in the bills that, in turn, cost taxpayers billions of dollars, protected industry giants and wreaked havoc on our economy.

No one else - not most members of Congress, the media, interest groups or the public - had time to read the bills, analyze the ramifications and fix the problems efore Congress made their decisions.

Time for that to change.Thousands of you have already signed the petition, and we hope you'll now help us get new signatures and make the calls necessary to havethe kind of impact we need. Time for Congress to Read their Bills.

Jake BrewerEngagement Director, Sunlight Foundation