Josh Tauburer has the analysis, drawn from the recently released “House of Representative’s Statement of Disbursements of the House, July 1, 2009 through September 30, 2009.”
His answer? Chief of Staff and Legislative Director salaries do not vary based upon a Member of Congress’s tenure in office. However, Staff Assistant, Legislative Assistant, and District Director salaries [...]

The Associated Press is reporting that the administration will soon end the TARP bailout program. No date has yet been specified, and it’s unclear how long the “wind down” process would take.
What I want to know is why there are ONLY 4 disclosures of lobbying contacts regarding TARP from September until now? They’re all regarding [...]

Here’s a new CRS report on GPO, complete with rich datasets (in document form) explaining GPO’s role as information distributor.
http://opencrs.com/document/R40897/
From its establishment in 1861, the Government Printing Office (GPO) has compiled, formatted,
printed, bound, and distributed documents that have recorded the activities of Congress (and the
work of other governmental entities). In current practice, more than half [...]

Ever wonder how much congressional staff earn? It’s possible to look up individual staff on Legistorm, but what I’m interested in is whether staff compensation match the roles that staffers play, particularly when compared to private sector employment.
Fortunately, with the help of Sunlight Lab’s team, I’ve been able to examine the staff compensation question by [...]

The Hill this morning has a short story on HR 1242, which it describes as “mandating that the Treasury Department create a real-time electronic database of information related to the bailout.” The House is expected to approve the measure, sponsored by Reps. King and Maloney this week.
Real-time? Online? Nice. It would be nice to get [...]

I recently looked into websites that make available government data at no cost but are privately run. What emerged was a list that most people would expect: federal laws and rulemakings, court decisions, public influence data, general voting information, and an agglomeration of special interest sites. They, in short, contained the “good government” information that attract [...]