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.
To empower new voices to start their career in nuclear weapons studies, the Federation of American Scientists launched the New Voices on Nuclear Weapons Fellowship. Here’s what our inaugural cohort accomplished.
Common frameworks for evaluating proposals leave this utility function implicit, often evaluating aspects of risk, uncertainty, and potential value independently and qualitatively.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ August 2023 pulse panel, 60% of public schools were utilizing a “community school” or “wraparound services model” at the start of this school year—up from 45% last year.