"Founding Father" Thomas Jefferson was a firm believer in "open" or "transparent" government -- and the principle of getting information into the hands of those democratically governed. As a nod to his considerable contributions, the Library of Congress named their website for following legislation in progress after him -- the "Thomas" site. It's a veritable "one-stop shopping" Web site for following progress on proposed legislation of concern to veterans and their families -- bills that are currently, or soon to be before the House of Representatives or the Senate. The Thomas site, linked here, is a free service of the Library of Congress -- in other words, our tax dollars at work. Go there and punch in any keywords of particular interest to you, such as "veterans" and "PTSD," and it will return a list of the bills that have been introduced to Congress and/or are being voted on, which include those specific terms. Then you will be able to follow the progress of those bills more closely.
Fortunately, organizations such as the IAVA, VoteVets and others, also are in the habit of letting their members know when something they consider important is getting close to a vote, so that members can take the initiative to call their senators and representatives. The recent successful passage of the new GI Bill was testament to those organizations' ability to get the word out from their constituents that passage was vitally important. However, organizations will typically focus only on the bigger proposed bills, or ones with the greatest possible impact to their membership. It behooves ordinary citizens -- you, me, us -- to become more aware in general of what proposed legislation is in the pipeline, so to speak, before it's voted on. Then, in case we care to get more involved, or convey our point of view on it to our elected representatives. Following a bill's progress, from proposal through passage or veto, at a site like the comprehensive Thomas site, is one way to do that.
Another way, that takes advantage of contemporary concepts like RSS feeds, is offered by OpenCongress.org, linked here. A joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation, OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. As they say on their web site:
OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress.
For most people, finding out what's really happening in Congress is a daunting and time-consuming task. The legislative process is frequently arcane and closed-off from the public, resulting in frustration with Congress and apathy about politics.
Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what's really going on in Congress, but this important information rarely makes its way into the light. The official website of the library of Congress, Thomas, publishes the full text of bills, but we can do much more to inform ourselves and make our government accessible. Now, with OpenCongress, everyone can be an insider.
What I liked, in particular, about their site is the alphabetical index to issues. Under "V," you can find those issues with "veteran" in the name -- including veteran's benefits, disability compensation, education, employment, hospitals, loans, medical care, organizations, pensions and rehabilitation. If you want to search for bills relating to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, that also has its own category, and is linked here. You can even subscribe to that category via RSS feed, so you can track that issue, and always kept apprised of what's going on in that area, with a minimum of effort -- because it comes to you, instead of your having to go out and find it (great!). (For the link to veterans, click here. For subsets of veteran issues, such as the ones named above, you have to search within "V" because they're listed alphabetically, starting with "veteran" as a prefix.)
If you're as big a fan of Facebook as I am, you'll note that OpenCongress.org has both a group, linked here, and a special application for Facebook users, linked here, to track bills on their profiles. (Yay.)
Editor's note: Thanks to subject matter expert, GuvBoy, for turning me on to the Thomas site. (And if he ever learns to embrace Facebook, let's hope I returned the favor by turning him on to OpenCongress.org.)