On the same day that he became the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Sen. Barack Obama introduced new legislation to expand public access to information about government spending.
The bill (pdf), known as “The Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008,” was crafted on a bi-partisan basis with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, is also an original co-sponsor of the bill, as is Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE).
The new bill would build upon and improve previous efforts by Senators Obama and Coburn to provide public access to federal grant and contract information through the USASpending.gov web site. Among other things, it would require copies of each federal contract and details of the bidding process to be published online.
The provisions of the bill were outlined in a joint press release on June 3.
“People from every State in this great Nation sent us to Congress to defend their rights and stand up for their interests,” Sen. Obama said in a prepared floor statement. “To do that we have to tear down the barriers that separate citizens from the democratic process and to shine a brighter light on the inner workings of Washington. This bill helps to shine that light.”
While most government agencies have cooperated with the contracting transparency requirements that were adopted in 2006, some intelligence agencies have dragged their heels in opposition. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which used to disclose their unclassified contracts, actually withheld such information from the USASpending.gov database in 2007 and 2008.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.