On Dec. 31, 2011, Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board Chairman Earl Devaney stepped down after leading the Board for almost three years. Devaney did more than anyone else to ensure Recovery Act spending was as transparent as it was, and his presence will be sorely missed.

While he didn't create the transparency provisions in the Recovery Act (those were written into the law or created by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)), Devaney implemented the law's requirements. He and his team created the Recovery.gov website from scratch in remarkably little time and did a great deal to ensure that recipients understood their reporting responsibilities under the law. As a former inspector general (for the Department of the Interior), Devaney placed a strong emphasis on finding and preventing fraudulent contracting and wasteful spending, creating the Recovery Operations Center. He also insisted on making maps of Recovery Act spending the focal point of Recovery.gov, arguing that the government needed to do more to display information in useful ways.

Devaney understood the importance of providing information to the public and talked of empowering an army of citizen inspectors general. We appreciated the fact that he frequently reached out to the transparency community to get feedback and guidance. When we raised concerns about the quality of the data from the first rounds of recipient reporting, the Board moved quickly to fix the problems it could, such as automatically filling in some data fields for recipients (for example, pulling in company information from existing contracting databases) and creating algorithms to spot potential red flags (such as recipients reporting that they had spent more money than they had received).

Devaney also championed transparency beyond the Recovery Act. He has been a vocal supporter of unique identifiers for recipients of federal funds, a thorny problem that has long plagued federal spending transparency. For the past six months or so, he has also been the head of the Government Accountability and Transparency (GAT) Board, created by President Obama last year to "provide strategic direction for enhancing the transparency of Federal spending and advance efforts to detect and remediate fraud, waste, and abuse." The GAT Board's recent report advocated for many reforms, most importantly centralizing spending databases and streamlining reporting obligations, in addition to calling for a universal system of unique identifiers for contracts and grants throughout the federal government.

Devaney will be replaced by current Education Department Inspector General Kathleen Tighe. Tighe has been on the Recovery Board since March 2010, serving as the chair of the Board's Accountability Committee since March 2011. Interestingly, Tighe will not be stepping down from her inspector general role, which possibly indicates a diminution of the position of Recovery Board chair. The chair was a full-time job for Devaney, who stepped away from his Department of the Interior position to lead the Board, and Devaney clearly had Vice President Biden's ear, meeting frequently with him to discuss various issues related to the Board's work.

The chair's reduced prominence is likely a reflection of the administration's desire to move on from the Recovery Act. With most of the Recovery Act money already spent, Tighe's job will largely be overseeing the dissolution of the Board and the application of lessons learned from the Recovery Act to the entire federal government, a process Devaney has already started with the GAT Board. There's still much to be done to improve federal spending transparency, but hopefully, even in a part-time role, Tighe will bring to her new position just as much passion and success as Devaney.

Image by Flickr user OversightandReform.

On Monday evening (Nov. 21), the Super Committee formally announced that it was unable to reach an agreement for reducing the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion. While others are decrying the lack of agreement by the Super Committee and calling it a failure, we at OMB Watch believe that each of us should, instead, be relieved.

The Super Committee was given less than 10 weeks to come to agreement on fundamental questions about the relationship of the federal government to the people it governs. Putting in place drastic funding cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and an array of vital programs that serve the American people would have been, under these circumstances, no less than absurd. Open and participatory lawmaking is the only way to ensure that federal budget policies support national priorities.

There are a series of fundamental questions we, as a country, are asking. Questions like: Should those who benefit most from the economy contribute more than everyone else? Is there some baseline level of living standards that everyone should enjoy? What is it? To what extent should the government protect people from pollution created by corporations that profit from manufacturing that creates such pollution? Will our physical safety be threatened if we have fewer nuclear submarines or stealth fighters?

The American people don't yet have a consensus on the answers to these questions, but we do know how essential it is that we begin to discover one. Once we have reached that point, it's Congress' job to legislate that consensus. It is not, however, Congress' job to sit behind closed doors and fundamentally restructure the federal budget without public input and without being held accountable for the massive restructuring of our national priorities that would result from such major budgetary decisions. The authority to do so was never theirs to claim.

The Joint Select Committee Deficit Reduction was tasked in August with developing a $1.2 trillion package of cuts and revenue-raisers that at least seven of the committee's 12 members could agree on, and to do so outside of the normal legislative processes. The committee held only four public hearings. It boasted about keeping the details of its private meetings secret. Public input into the negotiations was limited to those few savvy lobbyists had the right contacts programmed in their smartphones.

For these reasons, we join other public interest groups, like the National Women's Law Center, in saying that no deal is better than a bad deal. The inventors of the Super Committee and many other budget gadflies in Washington have come to believe that public scrutiny of lawmaking prevents elected officials from making "tough choices," but making tough choices while simultaneously grappling with public opinions is the central job of members of Congress. Why should they get to take an easy way out?

While we acknowledge that a national conversation about our country's budgetary priorities is necessary, we urge Congress to, the next time around, start this conversation the right way: Involve the American people, conduct their deliberations in a truly transparent fashion, and consider the best interests of those they represent.

Members of the Super Committee appear as far apart as ever when it comes to agreeing to a deal that would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years and the latest offer from some Democrats on the committee indicates that if a deal does actually win approval, it will be deeply irresponsible. A deal of this sort would maintain current inequities in the tax code while slashing funding for public protections and health care programs that are vital to working families and retirees.

In any negotiation, there are two poles – one from each side of the bargaining table. Eventually, a bargain is struck that falls somewhere between the initial positions' of the parties. For example, one can look at a plan put forth by the Super Committee's Republicans last week as their current bargaining position. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that this plan:

...seems designed to make only a modest revenue contribution toward deficit reduction and then to take revenues off the table for the larger rounds of deficit reduction that must follow. Moreover, even while yielding modest savings, the revenue component would make the package less balanced by conferring large new tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans while forcing low- and middle-income Americans to bear most of the plan's budget cuts as well as its tax increases.

This is a plan that prioritizes the concerns of the wealthy over the needs of the rest of the nation. From the other side of the table – the nominally progressive side – the Democrats responded with a plan that unfortunately shares some negative characteristics of the Republican proposal.

While the Democratic plan would collect more revenue than the Republican one, it appears to do so in a way that moves the overall burden of plan onto the backs of middle-class families by cutting $1 trillion in spending that supports health care, education, and public protections while preserving current tax levels for the wealthy and corporations.

The tax changes that Democrats proposed would raise $1 trillion over the next decade, with $350 billion coming from "miscellaneous revenue provisions" and $650 billion to be generated through a revenue package created by Congress's standing tax-writing committees. This package, however, would have to adhere to a few stipulations that do nothing to shift responsibility to the wealthy and corporations:

• An assumption that all of the Bush tax cuts are extended
• Limits the top tax bracket to 35 percent, which maintains a large Bush tax cut for the wealthy
• The tax code remains "as progressive as current law"
• Corporate taxes are reformed to "enhance competitiveness"

That Democrats would like to see the tax code remain “as progressive as today” is cold comfort. Upper-income households have seen their tax rates drop much faster than the lower- and middle-classes over the past 60 years, indicating that our "progressive" tax code isn’t nearly progressive enough. In addition, limiting the top bracket to 35 percent would lock in the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. "Enhancing competitiveness" for corporations is simply code for rearranging the myriad tax breaks and assorted other goodies handed out to corporations through the tax code without actually asking corporations to help maintain the economic system that has allowed them to stockpile record-setting levels of cash.

If Republicans remain loyal to their corporate and wealthy constituents and if Democrats continue to offer plans skewed away from national priorities, the resulting “middle ground” for a deal will be a very bad place. As the clock moves closer and closer to the Nov. 23 deadline for the Super Committee vote, chances of deal continue to fade. However, without an agreement, some $1 trillion in automatic, across-the-board budget cuts will take effect beginning in 2013, also punching holes in those government programs that prevent foodborne illnesses, ensure the safety of workers, aid victims of natural disasters, repair our crumbling infrastructure, and protect the environment.

If the Super Committee cannot come to agreement, Congress should be thankful that a bullet was dodged, reverse the triggered budget cuts, and, going forward, consider the priorities of the nation as whole, not just the priorities of a well-financed subset of special interests that disproportionately influence the federal budget.

Earlier this year, when Congress was finishing the long-overdue budget for fiscal year 2011, the House tried to use the must-pass spending bill to force adoption of dozens of "policy riders." These provisions would have done everything from preventing the regulation of greenhouse gases to prohibiting certain loans to mohair farmers. Fortunately, almost all of them were stripped out of the final bill. However, now, as Congress moves toward finishing the FY 2012 budget, Republicans in the House and Senate are once again attempting to bend the budget process to enact non-budget policies that can't pass on their own merits. Riders have no place in congressional spending bills.

With the new fiscal year already four weeks old, Congress is starting to get serious about the 2012 budget. Senate leadership is hoping to kick-start the appropriations process by passing the first of several "minibuses," this one combining three bills, which together fund the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, with some science programs thrown in as well.

According to analysis by OMB Watch staff, these three Senate bills contain at least 60 separate riders. Even though funding levels for the federal agencies covered by the bills are relatively noncontroversial, the attached riders contain hot-button issues. For instance, there are at least 12 policy riders limiting the government's power to regulate firearms, ranging from preventing the creation of a gun tracking database to making it easier to export firearm parts to Canada. There are two riders on abortion rights, even though none of these agencies handle much health policy. There are even two separate riders in the minibus preventing ACORN from receiving funding, despite the fact the community organizing group no longer exists. This is a bipartisan and bicameral problem, with both House and Senate appropriations bills full of riders.

The problem with policy riders, some of which have been regularly added to the appropriations bills for years, is that they subvert the normal legislative process. Normally, policy is created and debated in the committee charged with overseeing a particular set of issues and with overseeing the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing said policies. Including significant policy changes in appropriations bills subverts the normal processes of law-making, where elected representatives use hearings to gather information, to question experts, and to engage in debates that air a range of public opinions on a specific policy topic. Riders attached to appropriations bills do not undergo this level of scrutiny.

And when policy riders are added as amendments to bills, there is even less time for open and thoughtful evaluation. Senators have filed dozens of amendments to the current minibus, in addition to the riders already attached. Many of these amendments are quite radical. One proposed amendment would add a complex reporting requirement for federal employees working on climate change. There is almost no disclosure on which amendments the Senate is voting or notice about when the votes occur, effectively leaving the public locked out of debates on important policy matters. In the last week of debate, eight additional riders were added to the minibus as amendments, with more pending this week.

Fortunately, some opposition is building against these riders. In the House, Democrats are rallying behind a call to remove all riders from the appropriations bills, with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) leading the charge. The White House has likewise stated its opposition to riders, stating in a recent letter, "The Administration strongly opposes ideological and political provisions in these [appropriations] bills," indicating a willingness to veto any bill that goes too far.

While the Senate is still debating the current minibus and its many amendments, we urge Congress to reject any and all policy riders in its FY 2012 appropriations bills. Policy debates should occur in the open and be accessible to the public, not buried in spending bills voted on hurriedly without appropriate consideration.

Download the list of policy riders in the first minibus here.

Image by Flickr user nixter used under a Creative Commons license.