OMB Watch has joined more than 30 other groups calling for transparency and accountability requirements in federal recovery efforts, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1). The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR) is an assembly of organizations and individuals who believe transparency and accountability are essential to ensuring that hundreds of billions of dollars of federal spending is disbursed fairly; spent with minimal waste, fraud, and abuse; and can be assessed as effective or ineffective.
CAR released polling data showing bipartisan support for economic stimulus legislation and creation of a searchable website that holds government accountable. The CAR coalition immediately focused attention on the spending bill moving through Congress to ensure it contains adequate disclosure and accountability requirements. The "trans-partisan" coalition – it includes libertarian, progressive, and conservative organizations – is also beginning to monitor how the Obama administration will implement its Recovery.gov website.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a $700 billion bailout to banks, demonstrated the importance of transparency and accountability. TARP has been riddled with minimal transparency, making it difficult for congressional oversight panels, the media, or the public to know how the money is being spent and how taxpayers will benefit. CAR has recognized that now, before a single stimulus dollar is spent, is the time to initiate efforts to impart meaningful transparency and accountability requirements on what will likely be an $800 billion economic stimulus package of spending and tax cuts. The members of CAR agree that:
There must be requirements for detailed data and research tools on a searchable website to allow the public to effectively track and analyze the actions of the government (federal and state) – as well as bailed-out companies, subsidized companies, and government contractors – to judge how any recovery funds, including those to the financial sector, are being spent.
Only through transparency can the public, analysts, and the news media ascertain whether federal spending has not been wasted on profiteering, pay-to-play arrangements, or unseemly executive compensation. And by improving existing government information infrastructure in addition to deploying the tools of Web 2.0 technology, the federal government can achieve an unprecedented level of transparency. CAR's vision of accountable and transparent spending is one in which accurate spending data are collected in a timely fashion and disseminated through existing government websites like USASpending.gov, as well as external stakeholders through programming interfaces. The coalition recognizes that effective transparency rests not just on the usability of federal spending websites but also crucially on the data reporting infrastructure within the government.
While federal law requires that the government provide details on federal contracting and grant expenditures through USASpending.gov, existing reporting requirements fall short of enabling full transparency. Currently, once the federal government gives money to a state, those funds are not tracked by USASpending.gov. Yet, the economic stimulus package being debated in Congress would expend significant resources through state and local agencies. Only by capturing data on these expenditures through state-level reporting will Congress be able to ensure that all federal contracting and grant funds are visible to watchdogs within and outside the government.
CAR insists that all recipients of federal funds, including state and local agencies and the contractors and subcontractors working for those agencies, be required to report on the use of stimulus funds and metrics that could be used to gauge the economic impact of those funds. These data should include:
Additionally, to facilitate the reporting of these data, the federal government should promulgate clear definitions of and standards for reported data.
But transparency and accountability do not end with expenditure data reporting. CAR believes that reporting the method by which stimulus funds were distributed is also fundamental to implementing accountability. By posting contract bidding procedures online and by specifically identifying those contracts that were not competitively bid would enable the general public, analysts, and the press to readily identify opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse. Furthermore, CAR believes that information on the lobbying of officials at the state and federal level should also be reported online and on the same site on which stimulus spending data are posted.
CAR sees the enactment of effective transparency and oversight of stimulus spending as the first step in bringing to bear the power of 21st century technology on all federal expenditures. As the Senate debates approving an $800 billion economic stimulus package, and as the Treasury Department disperses $700 billion in capital injections into banks, the public is recognizing a gap in transparency and accountability. According to polling conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Topos Partnership, 79 percent of Americans believe that making the government more open to the public is important, and 83 percent believe that the government should be more accountable to American citizens. By applying CAR's proposed implements of stimulus transparency, the federal government would not only be addressing the public's concerns, but it would also be taking great strides toward becoming a more responsible steward of the nation's resources.
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Combined Federal Campaign #10201