In a big victory for open government, the Senate unanimously passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590), which would significantly increase the transparency and disclosure of federal spending information.

The bill, sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), would direct the Office of Management and Budget to create a publicly-available Web site that would list every entity receiving federal financial assistance, such as grants or contracts, and the totals awarded for each fiscal year.

The bill faced some opposition, but a strong left-right coalition led by OMB Watch and the National Taxpayers Union — and hard work by the bill’s sponsors eventually convinced leadership to bring the measure to the floor where it passed easily. CDT hopes that this coalition can stay together and put pressure on the House to resist calls to weaken this legislation, and instead approve the exact Senate language.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Open Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.