By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 14th, 2009
Congressional negotiators announced a stimulus deal on Wednesday which forged a somewhat slimmer $787 billion economic plan than what President Barack Obama had in mind. The bill was hammered together amid disappointment on both sides of the aisle–which means it’s one of the few truly bipartisan efforts in recent memory.
But there was still no way for the American public to precisely determine what will and will not be in any final Congressional agreement.
That is, until the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a government watchdog group, obtained and publicly released a copy of one major section of the legislation: that segment which sets the basis for the stimulus bill’s public accountability website, which almost certainly will be Recovery.gov.
Hence this section of the legislation may determine what you know of the stimulus plan’s operation–and what you won’t.
A Columbia Journalism Review online article published Feb. 12th quoted POGO spokeswoman Marthena Cowart as stating that its copy of Section 1519 was provided by the office of Senator Claire McCaskill (D- Missouri).
While the earlier House bill called for creating the public site, the Missouri senator introduced an amendment which demanded a more detailed disclosure of stimulus contracts on the website, and further called for the site’s launch within a month of the bill’s passage.
Negotiators did keep Sen. McCaskill’s legislative addition that the website be up and running in 30 days:
“The Board shall establish and maintain, no later than 30 days after the passage of this Act, a user-friendly, public-facing website to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of covered funds,” states Section 1519 of the stimulus bill.
However, the senator’s call for the website to track stimulus dollars that bankroll state and local contracts was kept out of the bill. The current negotiated legislation only ensures that such federal expenditures will be tracked.
Two other key parts, outlining the “content and function” of the website, were struck from the negotiated legislation.
The American Spark quotes both statements from the bill, with the original content intact – the underlined words were stricken from the final legislation.
The first, found within ‘part c’ of Section 1519, stated:
“The website shall provide accountability information, including a database of findings from audits, inspectors general, and the Government Accountability Office.”
That small removal of course means that the website will not have to provide a full database of study findings, but now will only be obligated to produce basic findings from a few chosen reports.
The other stricken section is just as telling. Also within ‘part c’, this portion of text originally stated:
“The website shall provide detailed data on contracts awarded by the Federal Government that expend covered funds, including information about the competitiveness of the contracting process, notification of solicitations for contracts to be awarded, and information about the process that was used for the award of contracts, and for contracts over $500,000 a brief summary of the contract ”
If the change holds, the stricken language will keep U.S. taxpayers from knowing precisely which companies are looking for stimulus contracts.
President Obama on Monday stated his vision for the public website meant to disclose stimulus outlays. His concepts sounded more thorough than anything now coming from 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 are being created so that all of you can be the eyes and ears. […] 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 U.S. citizens, the bill only institutes the ‘bare bones’ of the public website. The White House still may provide much more stimulus information on the site than anything discussed in the current legislation.
If enough people insist the Obama Administration produce such data, it will have little choice but to oblige.
