House, Senate Committees Advance Budget Transparency Bills

Both the House and Senate government oversight committees have advanced legislation that would make information regarding federal government spending more transparent to the public. The legislation, entitled the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act of 2019, was introduced by Congressmen Mike Quigley (D-IL) in the House and Gary Peters (D-MI) in the Senate.

Under the legislation (House bill H.R. 4894, Senate bill S. 2560), all federal agencies would be required to post their congressional budget justification on their website. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would also need to establish a public website with links to all the budget justifications and the Treasury Department would be required to post the agencies’ budget documents on USAspending.gov.

According to reports from GovExec, OMB only requires executive branch agencies to publish their congressional budget justifications online and its website only has the information from the White House.

When the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act was introduced in the fall, 29 good government groups, nonprofits, and unions wrote to congressional leaders that it “would provide needed transparency and accountability to agency spending proposals.”

Lead Senate Cosponsor Rob Portman (R-OH) explained in a bipartisan news release on the bill with Senator Peters, “Ohioans and all Americans should be able easily evaluate how the federal government is spending their hard-earned tax dollars. This bipartisan legislation will improve federal government transparency by requiring federal agencies to publish their annual budget justifications on a centralized website.”

"Government accountability is a fundamental principle in a democracy, and knowing the government's accounts – how agencies plan to spend taxpayer funds – is the bedrock for such accountability," said Daniel Schuman, Policy Director at Demand Progress in the release. "Senators Gary Peters and Rob Portman have rightly decided to hold the government to account by introducing legislation to require all its spending plans to be available online in one spot so that everyone can see how they intend to spend taxpayer funds."

Now that both House and Senate bills have passed out of their respective committees, the pieces of legislation will head to the floor in both chambers for a vote.