The Week In Congress (September 10-September 14, 2007)

The main event this week on Capitol Hill was General Petraeus's testimony on the situation in Iraq. Between the testimony and the shortened week due to Rosh Hashanah, the Senate still had time to get through one major appropriations bill and preempt a vote on a resolution defending Gen. Petraeus that Senate Republicans were trying to tack onto it. Also, President Bush was expected to sign the Senate ethics and transparency bill, S.1, on Friday. More details can be found below and the links go to the full Congresspedia articles. Remember, Congresspedia is a wiki, so if you would like to add to these articles or record your representatives' votes, head on over and click "edit":

• The Senate passed the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill in a vote of 88-7. The bill included amendments to provide funding for bridge repairs and to help low-income Americans with mortgage payments.
• The Senate ruled that an amendment to the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill condemning MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad was not germane to the bill, and was discarded.
• S.1, the Senate ethics and transparency bill was expected to be signed by President Bush on Friday. The Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal outlines the changes triggered by the bill:
  

  1) As of December 12, all Senate committees and subcommittees must post a transcript or audio/video file of each committee hearing within 21 days.

  2) As of January 1, 2008, the Secretary of the Senate will have established a publicly searchable online database of privately paid travel reports.

  3) As of August 1, 2008, the Clerk of the House must post online in a manner that is searchable, sortable, and downloadable both personal financial disclosures and privately paid travel reports.

  4) All lobbying changes will go into effect on January 1, 2008. The Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate will begin posting the first quarterly lobbying disclosure reports online on January 1, 2008.

  For more details, see his full post at the Sunlight Foundation's blog.