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July 27, 2011

Oh, the Sweet Irony of Politics

By Anne Weismann

FOIA, Governance & Legislation, Transparency, House Members, John Boehner, Senate Members, John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy

These days we don’t see much bi-partisan legislation, an exception being the Faster FOIA Act of 2011. Sponsored by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas and Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the legislation would establish an advisory panel to examine one of the most pressing problems with FOIA implementation – the backlog of more than 69,000 unprocessed FOIA requests. The bill soared through the Senate on a unanimous vote and has been pending since May in the House of Representatives.

Enter House Speaker John Boehner, looking for a vehicle to drive his debt ceiling bill through Congress. By stripping the Faster FOIA Act of its substance and replacing it with the text of his budget proposal, the House leadership would cut the time and number of cloture votes by two days. And voila – a FOIA bill is reborn as a budget bill. Pretty nifty trick if you ask me.

But given that nobody thinks Speaker Boehner’s proposal has a realistic chance of going anywhere, is it worth sacrificing another bill that has a more than decent chance of passing, all in the name of political gamesmanship? More pointedly, why must transparency and accountability always yield to political expedience? Today’s Washington Post editorial suggests the answer is no, and we agree. It’s time for both parties to come together on an issue that, at least in the Senate, has managed to transcend political party and pass the Faster FOIA Act in its intended form – a bill to improve transparency and accountability.