[updated July 21, 1994 shabbir] ********************************************************************* DISTRIBUTE WIDELY ********************************************************************* Table of contents: Introduction Result of House Rules committee vote Status of the bill 1994 Voters Guide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION Voters Telecomm Watch keeps scorecards on legislators' positions on legislation that affects telecommunications and civil liberties. If you have updates to a legislator's positions, from either: -public testimony, -reply letters from the legislator, -stated positions from their office, please contact vtw@vtw.org so they can be added to this list. General questions: vtw@vtw.org Mailing List Requests: vtw-list-request@vtw.org Press Contact: stc@vtw.org Gopher URL: gopher://gopher.panix.com:70/11/vtw WWW URL: We're working on it. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESULT OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE VOTE ON HR 3937 Based on information gathered by volunteers, we've been able to piece together some of the positions of the House Rules Committee as to how they voted for/against opening up HR 3937 to amendments on the House floor. [This is now somewhat moot, as is explained in the next section.] Extensive kudos go to Joe Thomas <jthomas@pawpaw.mitre.org> gaj@portman.com (Gordon Jacobson) who both did extensive work to help find this information. Here are the results we were able to obtain: [The committee voted 5-4 to open the bill] HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE MEMBERS Dist ST Name, Address, and Party Phone ==== == ======================== ============== 9 MA Moakley, John Joseph (D) 1-202-225-8273 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 3 SC Derrick, Butler (D) 1-202-225-5301 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 24 CA Beilenson, Anthony (D) 1-202-225-5911 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 24 TX Frost, Martin (D) 1-202-225-3605 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 10 MI Bonior, David E. (D) 1-202-225-2106 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 3 OH Hall, Tony P. (D) 1-202-225-6465 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 5 MO Wheat, Alan (D) 1-202-225-4535 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 6 TN Gordon, Bart (R) 1-202-225-4231 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 28 NY Slaughter, Louise M. (D) 1-202-225-3615 Voted "open" 22 NY Solomon, Gerald B. (R) 1-202-225-5614 Voted "open" 1 TN Quillen, James H. (R) 1-202-225-6356 Told a constituent he would vote for "open". 28 CA Dreier, David (R) 1-202-225-2305 UNSPECIFIED POSITION 14 FL Goss, Porter J. (R) 1-202-225-2536 UNSPECIFIED POSITION It is probably not worth the trouble to ask the remaining legislators how they voted unless you happen to chat with their staff often. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STATUS OF THE BILL (updated 7/21/94) If you read the appropriate newsgroups (or any major newspaper) you've seen the news about the Gore/Cantwell compromise. Since everyone has reprinted it already, we'll not reprint it again, though we'll happily send you a copy should you have missed it. The upshot of this is that Rep. Maria Cantwell will not be offering her amendment and therefore HR 3937 is a dead end this year for liberalizing cryptography exports. Since VTW is an organization dedicated to working on legislation, and there is no longer a piece of relevant legislation, we will be concentrating on other projects. The "cantwell" section of our archive will be reworked, and the records of legislators that voted will be kept there for future reference. [NOTE: these voting records will also be rolled into our 1994 Voters Guide] Here is the final schedule/chronology of the bill Jul 21, 94 Rep. Cantwell and Vice Pres. Al Gore compromise on seven principles, retreating on the Clipper chip; Rep. Cantwell chooses not continue to press the legislation or the amendment (see relevant articles in today's NY Times and Washington Post) Jul 20, 94 HR3937 comes to House floor; a "good" amendement will be offered Jul 11, 94 House Rules Committee marks HR3937 "open"; allowing amendments Jun 30, 94 [*** vote postponed, perhaps till the week of 7/11/94] House Rules Comm. decides whether to allow amendments on the bill when it reaches the House floor Jun 14, 94 Gutted by the House Select Committee on Intelligence May 20, 94 Referred to the House Select Committee on Intelligence May 18, 94 Passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 18 attached to HR 3937, the General Export Administration Act Dec 6, 93 Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and Nov 22, 93 Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1994 VOTERS GUIDE Voters Telecomm Watch believes that you should be informed about your legislators' positions on key issues. We will be developing a survey to give to current legislators and their challengers that will gauge their positions on key issues involving telecommunications and civil liberties. These results will be made publicly available on the net for you to use in casting your vote in November. We'll be depending on you to help get legislative candidates to fill out and return their surveys. Please watch this space for the announcement of survey availability in the coming weeks. If you wish to participate in the development of the survey, feel free to join the working list by mailing a note to that effect to vtw@vtw.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------