According to today's CQ (subscription req.):

Slaughter to Dreier: No Web Page...and No Whining
By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff

Republicans say the House Rules Committee has found a new way to suppress debate - by denying them a Web site.

Ranking member David Dreier of California complained that Democrats are blocking money to create a separate committee Web page for the minority even though the right to one is stipulated in the House administration handbook.

"The minority and subcommittees shall be entitled to a separate page that is linked to and accessible only from the committee's Web page," the handbook reads.

Frustrated by a lack of cooperation from Rules Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., Dreier wrote a letter Thursday informing her that he intends to take it up with the Administration Committee.

"While I regret having to take such a drastic action, your intransigence on this matter leaves me no other choice," Dreier wrote.

"Oh God, does he ever stop whining?" Slaughter replied when informed of the letter.

Rules Committee spokesman John Santore said the GOP request is still under review because "this would be the first instance of a minority Rules Web site being set up, and so we can't base decisions concerning technological and budgetary requirements on precedent."

But a related precedent already may have been set. Back in February, Dreier supported Slaughter's Rules Committee budget request in part because it included "funding for a Minority Web site."

Rep. Slaughter's attempt to silence the minority on the web is a great example of why Members of Congress should not have the power to restrict the other when it comes to the Internet.

In the end, the real losers in their game of petty politics are citizens who end up getting Committee and Member websites which are online, glossy fliers and have no universal standards for what information will be "filtered" out to citizens.

The only way to ensure that Committee's are doing their diligence to get fair, honest and accurate information out to the public is to allow both the Chairman and Ranking Member to have an equal and ample budget for their individual site.

As one of the key contributors to the bipartisan Open House Project report which has been endorsed by Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and Republican Leader Boehner, it troubles me deeply to learn that Rep. Louise Slaughter thinks that "allowing" citizen-access to both perspectives of a Committee's work is a laughing matter.

In John Wonderlich's op-ed which ran in the Hill newspaper in May detailing the important work of House Committee's and how they could use technology to increase citizen access, he wrote:

The work of congressional committees, the vital organs of Congress, remains difficult for citizens to access, despite their central public role in developing policies that guide this nation. Their centrality to the legislative process may be generally underappreciated because of a lack of meaningful public access.

The work our Rules Committee is doing is too important for Chairman Slaughter to prevent citizens from seeing both perspectives. And I'm hopeful that before this Congress is over, the budgets for information technology will no longer rest in the hands of those who know nothing about it.

For further reading, read the Open House Project's full chapter on House Committee's.