On this Sunshine Week, a bipartisan transparency bill aims to shine light on the dark corners of the federal government.
The Expedited Transparency Act bolsters the bipartisan effort that created USASpending.gov in 2006, the official open data source of spending information for the U.S. government. The bill dramatically speeds agency reporting deadlines from 30 days to three days, moving the leviathan government closer to the ultimate goal of open government advocates: real-time transparency.
“Right now, the American people are forced to wait a month before they can see how their tax dollars are being disbursed, a delay that undermines accountability and leaves the public in the dark,” said Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a California Democrat, in a statement to The Federalist. “With this commonsense reform, we can take a meaningful step toward a more transparent and trustworthy federal government.”
‘Every Single Cent’
The U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee held a hearing that addressed the bill Wednesday, at which ranking member Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., spent much of his opening remarks bashing the Trump administration for, as the liberal put it, “operating in darkness.” It somehow slipped Markey’s memory that the Biden administration, ostensibly led by a president kept hidden from the press and the public, has gone down as one of the most opaque in U.S. history.
Sen. Joni Ernst, chairwoman of the committee, said the relationship between We the People and the government is out of balance.
“The government demands to know how much money all of you earn so it can tax every single cent, yet once Washington gets its hands on your money it’s anyone’s guess where it is even going,” the Iowa Republican, who has highlighted federal government waste through her monthly “squeal awards,” said during her opening comments.
‘The Right to Know’
Transparency got a huge boost 20 years ago when fiscal hawk Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and a freshman senator from Illinois, Barack Obama (who could never be confused for a fiscal hawk), worked together on the USASpending legislation. A couple of aides in Coburn’s office — John Hart, who today serves as CEO of government spending tracker Open the Books, and Sean Davis, who went on to launch The Federalist and serve as its CEO — did much of the heavy lifting in getting USASpending off the ground.
Hart spoke at Wednesday’s hearing. He has called the Expedited Transparency Act a much-needed improvement to the current system, dramatically speeding up the reporting process to “help sunshine overcome secrecy.”
“In a free society, you can’t have accountability without visibility,” Hart said. That’s particularly so when your society is buried under $39 trillion of debt.
Open the Books has long advocated for real-time transparency, including modified access to the Treasury Payment System so that the public can see what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was seeing — with national security safeguards in place.
Hart praised Panetta and Rep. Josh Brecheen, an Oklahoma Republican, for sponsoring the bill.
“There are no Republican facts or Democrat facts. There are simply facts. Taxpayers have the right to know how the government is spending their money in as close to real-time as possible,” the government watchdog said.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is a co-sponsor of the Expedited Transparency Act. Roy previously introduced a bill that would give Congress access to Treasury Payment System transactions exceeding $25,000. Proponents say the Expedited Transparency Act would build on the previous work.
In his testimony, Hart said as technology advances, so too should the promise of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 9: namely, that “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” “Time to time” in the digital age should be as close to now as possible, transparency advocates say.
Others testifying at Wednesday’s hearing included Justin Goodman, senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project; Joshua Miller, director of Congress Watch, a division of Public Citizen, a left-wing organization created by former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader; and Jeff Arkin, director, strategic issues, at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Sunshine Week, which runs through this weekend, is an annual campaign of partners from journalism, education, and public and private sectors to promote open government and the importance of freedom of information. It is held on the week of March 16 — the birthday of founding father James Madison, who presented the first Bill of Rights to the new United States Congress and served as the fourth president of the United States.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
