Washington, D.C. - Today, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, the Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, urged passage of H.R. 22, a bill that would increase transparency of federal government spending-including all funding dedicated to addressing the coronavirus pandemic. The bill passed the House overwhelmingly 412-2.
Congressional budget justifications are plain language explanations of how agencies propose to spend money that they request from Congress. While agencies produce an annual congressional budget justification, they are not always made publicly available. This bill would require that those justifications be posted on a single, searchable, publicly available database.
Below are Chairwoman Maloney’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, on the House floor today:
“The bill before us, the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act, is a common sense, good government measure every Member should support. It would require the congressional budget justification documents that agencies prepare for Congressional committees to be posted on-line in a centralized, searchable database. This would make these detailed, plain-language explanations of how agencies plan to spend taxpayer dollars more accessible to the public.
“I want to thank Representatives Mike Quigley for his work on this bill. He has a long history as a strong advocate of transparency in the operations of the Federal government. This bill builds on the work of the Committee to improve government transparency by allowing the public to more easily learn how federal agencies spend their taxpayer dollars."
