The Washington Post is reporting on a congressional report which found that the Department of Homeland Security's (no-)bidding system is "prone to abuse."

It's a good thing, then, that Congress is working on a bill that would create a searchable database of all federal government and contracts. Indeed, a database like this would make it easier to identify potential fraudsters.

The multibillion-dollar surge in federal contracting to bolster the nation's domestic defenses in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been marred by extensive waste and misspent funds, according to a new bipartisan congressional report.

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

Washington Post: Homeland Security Contracts Abused

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

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

Over the past few months, OMB Watch has been working closely with Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL) on a bill to create a free, searchable database available to the public containing information on all federal spending - both grants and contracts. This legislation (S. 2590) continues to move forward in the Senate and OMB Watch remains strongly supportive of it (see the OMB Watch website for more information on the bill and to access previous coverage on this by OMB Watch. You can also read recent media coverage of the effort.)

New Effort for Transparency and Disclosure Underway
To further support transparency and disclosure of budget information, OMB Watch is joining with the National Taxpayers Union to rally support for a legislative effort to require posting of all departmental budget justifications online (excluding any sensitive security information). Budget justifications are contain details of agencies' spending priorities and outline budget allocations from previous years, and are compiled by federal offices and agencies for the congressional appropriations committees in order to help them develop their budgets each year. Currently, there is no way for the public to access these documents and no reason for them not to be available.

Please consider signing-on to this joint letter supporting the disclosure of agency budget justifications. This is a basic good government proposal that will help to bring about a more effective and efficient government.

Deadline for Sign-ons is next Tuesday, July 25 at 6:00 pm. Please email Adam Hughes at ahughes@ombwatch.org to sign your organization on.

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.