Question: Did Congress exempt itself from the Freedom of Information Act, as Tom Evslin asks here? If not, I can’t find any means to file FOIAs with Senate committees or members. I want to continue my Quixotic quest to get real citizens into faked Congressional hearings or at least learn more about how fake they are. As I knew and as my commenters say below, these events are staged to say just what our legislators want to hear (or, in the case of confirmation hearings, they are staged so the legislators can hear themselves talk). But there’s no reason it has to stay that way. In media, we didn’t have a voice but now we do. Shouldn’t we in government?
: ANSWER: Mark Tapscott, who’s in the know in Washington, says that, indeed, Congress did exempt itself. And how scandalous is that? We need a sunshine law into our own damned representatives’ offices more than we need campaign finance reform.
No, Jeff, Congress has always exempted itself from the federal FOIA. Transparency for thee in the Executive Branch, but not for me in the legislative branch.
I did check. the FOIA covers only “agencies” carefully defined NOT to be Congress. Blogged a little moe about that and your attempt to be heard here.
The other posters are correct - Congress has always been exempt from the FOIA.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press describes this in a section of its guide on How to Use the Federal FOI Act that notes which federal institutions are and aren’t covered by the act:
http://www.rcfp.org/foiact/guide_c.html
The RCFP guide is a terrific resource in general on the FOIA.
Crazy idea: I’d like to see a resource where those that file FOIA requests post their requests and results to a public site, that all can contribute to, and reference.
Karl:
It’s not a bad idea but I doubt you’d get many postings. I file a lot of FOIA requests in my job, and I don’t like to advertise what information I’m looking for (although a FOIA request is, itself, obtainable through FOIA, if you have some idea of who made it, to whom, and what it’s about).
About the question of whether Congress is subject to FOIA: It shouldn’t be exempt, but I’m surprised that someone who has “experience as a critic, editor and media executive” doesn’t know that it is. If you’re in any way connected to the journalism biz, this is elementary knowledge, along the lines of knowing that there is a Senate and House.
Karl and Dexter:
All FOIA requests are public documents and can be obtained from the agencies to which they were submitted. The responses to the FOIAs are also public documents and can be obtained. Agencies are required to maintain logs of when FOIAs are received and who they are received from, and, under both legislation currently under consideration in Congress and Bush’s recent executive order concerning FOIA administration, agencies are to be required to maintain tracking systems analogous to those used by FedEx, Amazon. com, etc. to track the status of every FOIA request.
Mark, is there a web searchable resource I can use to find all that data? Or do I again, need to make a personal, direct request of those agencies?
[...] Well, it ain’t a bandwagon, yet, but Mark Tapscott and Glenn Reynolds agree that we need to extend the Freedom of Information Act to Congress. Porkbusters is only the first of many good uses for sunshine on the dark corridors of power. [...]