Congress coverage on how lawmakers write, fund and police federal spending, from supplemental bills to earmark disclosure and fiscal reform plans. Read about the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, House Republican plans for spending cuts and the citizen project naming authors of secret earmarks.
What happened after the hunt Exposing the holds cleared the way for a vote, and the bill became law within weeks. The fight also pushed the Senate to change its rules on secret holds, though critics say the changes have been only partly followed. The bill and its sponsors Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced S.2590…
The bill at the center of this 2006 story became the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (Public Law 109-282). It created USAspending.gov, which the Office of Management and Budget launched in December 2007, and the DATA Act of 2014 later expanded it. Earmarks, the “pork” the bloggers wanted to expose, were subject to moratoriums…
The 2006 law this post celebrated still runs today: USAspending.gov, the public database it created, now tracks trillions of dollars in federal awards. Earmarks took a different path. Congress banned them starting in 2011 and brought them back in 2021 as Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate. As…
S.2590 became law on September 26, 2006, when President George W. Bush signed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (Public Law 109-282). That law led to USAspending.gov, which the Office of Management and Budget launched in December 2007. The Treasury Department runs the site today under the wider data rules of the 2014 DATA…
The bill behind this 2006 project, the House’s fiscal 2007 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (H.R. 5647), never became law. Fiscal 2007 ended with a full-year continuing resolution, H.J.Res. 20 (Public Law 110-5), which said earmarks listed in committee reports had no force of law. Congress then required sponsors’ names to be disclosed, banned earmarks entirely from…
The secret holds broke in about two weeks. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) acknowledged his hold, the Senate passed S. 2590 by unanimous consent on September 7, 2006, the House followed by voice vote, and President George W. Bush signed it on September 26, 2006, as Public Law 109-282. The law led to USAspending.gov. Earmarks, one…
The bill at the center of this July 2006 story never became law. Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s Government Efficiency Act (H.R. 5766) never got a House floor vote, and it died when the 109th Congress ended. Of the four budget reforms House conservatives asked for that year, only the earmark rule was adopted: the House approved…
The House voted down every Flake amendment covered on this page in 2006. Congress then banned earmarks in 2011 and brought them back in 2021 as Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate. The new rules require public request lists, a signed statement that the member has no financial…
The Coburn-Obama bill described below became law. President George W. Bush signed S. 2590, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), on September 26, 2006, as Public Law 109-282. The final version covered both grants and contracts. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched USAspending.gov in December 2007, the DATA Act of 2014…
Rep. Steve King’s CUT idea, which would have forced quarterly House votes to cancel unspent federal money, never became a House rule. The other measure covered on this page did pass. Sen. Tom Coburn’s spending database bill, S. 2590, was signed on September 26, 2006, and led to USAspending.gov. Earmarks went further than the 2006…
