Following up on reports that the IRS plans to eliminate almost half of its estate and gift tax audit team, Chief IRS overseer and all-around good guy Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) has sent a letter signed by 22 other representatives to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson expressing their "serious concerns" about the planned reduction and requesting that the IRS "immediately delay this decision until Congress has adequate time to review [the] plan."

Rothman continues to find himself on the right side of enforcement issues at the IRS. Whether it is forcing the IRS to stop wasting taxpayers dollars to line the pockets of private companies, or fighting a back-door repeal of the estate tax by weaking its enforcement, Rothman is doing a wonderful job minding the people's business within the Internal Review Service.

Great work Rep. Rothman! Keep it up.

OMB Watch has partnered with the National Taxpayers Union to draft a letter to the Senate in support of making federal department budget justification reports public documents. The completed letter was sent to the Hill yesterday afternoon with the endorsement of 54 organizations.

Budget justifications are currently submitted to the House and Senate appropriations committees to aid in the formulation of the annual federal budget. Currently, some agencies publish their budget justifications online (see Defense and Energy), but the documents are not required to be available.

Sen. Coburn (R-OK) plans to offer amendments to the FY 07 appropriations bills requiring federal departments and agencies to post their budget justifications within 48 hours of being submitted to the appropriations committees.

Thanks to all the organizations who are lending their support to this important effort.

Read the letter

OMB Watch has been working diligently for the past few months to make information on all federal contracts and grants available online in a free, searchable database. We are navigating through the technical challenges, bureaucratic mazes, and overwhelming amount of data to make the database simple, efficient, and user-friendly. But we need your help with a very important part of our work - the name of the website.

We need a name and web address (url) that signifies the importance of this service and captures the public's imagination. We have set up a one-question survey for you to share your thoughts and vote for your favorite candidate. Please take 1 minute to help us out and vote.

Vote on the Contracts and Grants Database Name

Legislation to create a free, public, searchable database (S. 2590) containing grants and contracts spending information is gaining momentum in the Senate this week. OMB Watch testified in support of this bill at a subcommittee hearing last week of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and this week on Thursday the full HSGAC committee will mark up a consensus version of the bill. The bill is expected to pass the full committee unanimously.

The list of Senators supporting the bill has also increased recently, with 10 cosponsors spread out broadly on the political spectrum. This should certainly help for quick and easy adoption of the bill on the Senate floor. The current cosponsors are below:

Sen George Allen (R-VA)
Sen Tom Carper (D-DE)*
Sen Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
Sen John Cornyn, John (R-TX)
Sen Jim DeMint, Jim (R-SC)
Sen Johnny Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)
Sen John McCain, John (R-AZ)*
Sen Barrack Obama, Barack (D-IL)*
Sen Rick Santorum, Rick (R-PA)
Sen John Sununu (R-NH)

* = original cosponsor

In the considerably divided legislative body that is Congress, it is rare to see a bill gain so much positive attention from both sides of the aisle. It has also gained the support of a whole slew of advocacy groups from all stripes of the ideological spectrum. As a staunch proponent of S. 2590, OMB Watch’s Executive Director, Gary Bass, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Federal Fiscal Management this week in support of this bill.

But the bill is also gaining a lot of attention in the press as well. See, for instance, these editorials in two of the nation’s most widely-read newspapers.

The Washington Post:

Why doesn't the majority, which pays for all this waste, rise up in revolt against the sheer gluttony of it?

The answer is that the taxpaying majority doesn't care, not least because it is oblivious. But maybe there is hope. In the era of online political organization and Internet search, information on pork-peddling scandals ought to spread faster and more widely.

The Los Angeles Times:

It's hard to find fault with legislation that promotes such transparency - and it's no surprise that there are enthusiasts on both sides of the aisle, including co-sponsors Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). A refreshingly motley combination of interest groups, including Greenpeace, the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, are also onboard.

UPDATE:
The Christian Science Monitor was another major paper carrying coverage of the effort to enact this legislation:

A Move to Lift the Veil on U.S. Spending

Gary Bass, Executive Director of OMB Watch, testified today in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Federal Fiscal Management in support of S. 2590, a bill to require the government to create a user-friendly, searchable, online database available to the public containing comprehensive information on all federal spending.

OMB Watch has been supportive of this legislation and has worked closely with the bill's cosponsors (Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barrack Obama (D-IL)) over the past month and is very optimistic about the bill passing the Senate.

You can read previous commentary on this bill on the OMB Watch Budget Blog (6.23.06, 6.22.06, 6.21.06, 5.31.06)

You can also read Gary's testimony on the OMB Watch website.