Stimulus Bill Fogs Transparency

As I'm writing this post, I'm also trying to download part A of the 500-page conference stimulus bill posted on The House Rules Committee's Web site yesterday just before midnight. I've been trying all morning and it looks like it will take at least another 30 minutes to download the 13 megabyte file.

While ordinarily I would blame network problems or my aging computer, neither seems to be at fault here. The delays are probably the result of the extremely high interest the bill has generated among the public, which the committee's Web site was likely ill-prepared to handle. Normally this would be a minor inconvenience, but since the House is expected to vote on the bill this afternoon, it saps away valuable time that could be spent breaking down the bill and examining the conference committee's changes.