Congratulations, America. You've won a small but important victory in Congress' efforts to overhaul Wall Street.

No, I'm not talking about what the big financial regulation bill -- the one that has emerged after 20 hours of Capitol Hill negotiations -- will do or won't do to banks and securities firms. The victory here is that you will have the chance to read the entire bill before it gets voted on. And so will your members of Congress.

From the Sunlight Foundation blog:

Need some reading materials for the weekend? Do we have a recommendation for you! The consensus version of the massive financial system reform bill will be put online starting tomorrow ...

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) says that the entire bill will be online for “at least 68 hours” (with most parts of the bill online for much longer) before it is taken up for a vote in Congress. Rep. Frank has been chairing the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- it seems like such an obvious thing to do, to give people the chance to read massively influential legislation before it gets voted on, not afterwards. But it routinely doesn't happen. Members of Congress routinely vote on major bills without having read them, and without having given themselves (or We the People) enough time to read them. That's a very handy way for lobbyists, special interests and just about anybody else to sneak in a little language here or a clause there that creates a loophole for their company or industry, or gives them special protection, or exempts them from regulation that will cover everyone else.

The federal stimulus bill, the $789 billion one? Its text was available just 13 hours before it was voted on. 

You'd think our statesmen in Washington would figure this out on their own. They haven't. U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Republican from right here in Houston, actually introduced a resolution in the House (along with Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat) that would have implemented a mandatory 72-hour rule for nonemergency legislation; there doesn't appear to have been any action on that resolution since last September, so I gather that it's stalled. 

If change is gonna come, to use Sam Cooke's phrase, it may have to come from outside Capitol Hill, not inside. 

That's why I'm a supporter of the Read the Bill campaign, and you should be, too. Read the Bill is an initiative to get Congress to post bills online 72 hours in advance of votes. Read the Bill, launched by the Sunlight Foundation, has endorsements from groups across the political spectrum, including Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen, the National Taxpayers Union, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the Center for Responsive Politics.

It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. Read the Bill is a good idea. It benefits you, me, all of us. 

If that sounds good to you, then you can get involved, too. Go over to ReadtheBill.org and sign the online petition like I have. You can also follow its progress on Twitter by following @ReadTheBill.

Read The Bill from Sunlight Foundation on Vimeo.

Contact Jennifer Peebles at 281-656-1681 or at jennifer@texaswatchdog.org.