Although the stimulus conference committee struck a deal yesterday afternoon, there’s still no public rendering of the final agreement as it will be voted on by the House and the Senate.
But the Project On Government Oversight has obtained a copy of Section 1519, which outlines requirements for how the stimulus’s accountability website—almost certainly Recovery.gov—will be operated. Marthena Cowart, a POGO spokesperson, says the copy was provided by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill’s office.
While the House bill, which passed first, called for creating the site, McCaskill had introduced Senate Amendment 196, which required more detailed and thorough disclosure of contracting details, and would have required its launch within 30 days.
The conference’s version does have McCaskill’s addition that the site be up and running under a month, but it does not have language she’d called for requiring that local and state contracts funded by stimulus money be tracked on the website—merely that federal funds be so tracked. Still, POGO—smarting from the conference’s removal of certain whistleblower protections—is counting the conference website provisions as a one of the bill’s “bright spots.”
On Monday, President Obama outlined his vision for Recovery.gov, which sounded more comprehensive than what looks to be coming out of congress:
“We’re actually going to set up something called Recovery.gov—this is going to be a special website we set up, that gives you a report on where the money is going in your community, how it’s being spent, how many jobs it’s being created so that all of you can be the eyes and ears. And if you see that a project is not working the way it’s supposed to, you’ll be able to get on that website and say, ‘You know, I thought this was supposed to be going to school construction but I haven’t noticed any changes being made.’ And that will help us track how this money is being spent. …The key is that we’re going to have strong oversight and strong transparency to make sure this money isn’t being wasted.”
Luckily for Obama, Congress’s descriptions of what the website might look like are more of a floor than a ceiling—he can go much further, and it looks like that what he’s planning on.
I'll be interested to see if President Obama sticks with his campaign pledge to publicize all legislation and hold it open for 5 days of public review. He's been selling this stimulus plan as such an emergency, that it seems like he might try to sign it right away.
But as one of the largest spending bills in history, it seems like transparency has never been more important than here.
-Aaron Street
#1 Posted by Aaron Street, CJR on Thu 12 Feb 2009 at 04:03 PM
Hi Aaron:
We'll see. As you suggest, he actually only promised to do that for "non-emergency" legislation. (And who decides what's an "emergency" and what isn't? So far, just him.)
Even so, the slim track record on this is not promising. On January 29, the President signed the Lilly Ledbetter-inspired equal pay law and THEN put it up on the White House website for comment. (Talk about putting the cart before the horse!) And as I understand it, there was nothing emergency about the bill--its effects were retroactive to the day that Ms. Ledbetter lost her Supreme Court case, so waiting five more to sign it wouldn't have caused anyone any harm. In my mind there are two ways to look at that sequence of events: that the administration is still in its early days and wires are getting crossed, or that they've decided to break this promise and figured it would be better to get whatever flak they'd get for waffling out of the way on an early popular bill.
FYI, the solons at theSt. Petersburg Times's PoltiFact have determined that out of over 500 promises Obama made while campaigning, the five day rule is the only one that he has so far straight-up broken.
#2 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Fri 13 Feb 2009 at 12:37 PM