Bipartisan Executive Branch Reform Bill Advances in House
An ambitious bill (pdf) to promote an entire menu of “good government” reforms in the executive branch was endorsed on a bipartisan basis in the House Government Reform Committee today and reported to the full House.
The bill would notably limit the use of “pseudo-classification” markings such as “sensitive but unclassified” and “for official use only” unless they are authorized by statute or regulation. Such markings have been increasingly used by government agencies to restrict public access to unclassified information.
The “Executive Branch Reform Act of 2006,” HR 5112, was introduced by Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-CA), and unanimously supported by the Committee’s members.
Among its various provisions the bill would: end secret meetings between lobbyists and most executive branch officials; enhance protections for national security whistleblowers; and ban covertly sponsored government propaganda.
We won’t solve the cost-of-living crisis without improving the capacity of state public utility commissions to protect customers, find and implement new solutions to meet rising demand, and realign broken utility incentives.
Public service commissions should require utilities to quantify avoided healthcare costs, reduction in pollution exposure, and improvements in population health alongside traditional metrics.
California just took an important step toward making electric trucks more affordable and easier for businesses to buy.
In 2023 alone, more than 2,300 people died in the United States directly from extreme heat. Expanding access to residential air conditioning could reduce heat-attributable deaths and adult emergency department.