[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 17349]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                      TAXPAYERS RIGHT-TO-KNOW ACT

  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I first wish to spend a few minutes 
talking about my colleague and chairman of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee.
  The last 2 years have been a real pleasure on my part, and I have 
grown to have a great friendship with the chairman of the committee. I 
can truly say in our committee we have done a lot of great work. We 
have both compromised on a lot of issues to try to move the country 
forward, and to him I am thankful for that. I don't think either of us 
have had to break on any principles we have had to be able to do that. 
I think our committee has been a model in terms of doing bipartisan 
bills and on bipartisan approval of nominees. For him, I would say I 
appreciate his leadership this past year. He has the unfortunate 
attribute of having the same initials I do, so it is somewhat confusing 
on our committee. But maybe that is why we have been as successful as 
we have.
  I also wish to recognize the hard work of so many of the staff 
members on both sides, the work they put in, and the cooperative nature 
under which they have worked.
  We have before us a bill we are trying to clear called the Taxpayers 
Right-to-Know Act, and it is actually a continuation of a bill that 
Senator Carper, myself, and several others--including the President--
started when we started the transparency act back in 2009. This follows 
along with the DATA Act which was passed this year.
  What this bill does is says the American people ought to know where 
the money is being spent, and so it says the agencies are going to list 
the programs they have. It is done in a stepwise fashion so it doesn't 
put too much pressure on OMB as they try to implement it. I believe at 
this time we are waiting to make sure we have clearance for this before 
we ask for a unanimous consent.
  I yield my remaining time to the chairman of the committee, Senator 
Carper.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I would like to say to my colleague, Ted 
Kennedy said to me when I first got here a number of years ago, talking 
about compromise and that sort of thing--he always said: I am willing 
to compromise on policy, not on principle.
  I think if we look at what we have accomplished in the last 2 years, 
that is exactly what we have done. I thank my colleague for being a 
great leader--not just of his caucus but of our body and for being my 
friend.
  With that, I would say on the legislation that is before us, as he 
suggested, the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act does build on previous 
legislation reported out of our committee. Some of those bills, the 
DATA Act, the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act, and 
some others have been signed into law with bipartisan support, 
including by the current President.
  The Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act is a good government bill that will 
provide better and more detailed information to Congress and the 
American people about Federal spending. Congress has passed several 
bills in the last few years to improve transparency on government 
spending and to get this information online. Unfortunately, the 
information has not always been provided at the level of detail 
taxpayers and a number of my colleagues and I would prefer.
  This bill builds on the Government Performance and Results 
Modernization Act passed in 2010 and that I coauthored with Senators 
Warner and Akaka. That bill required OMB to work with agencies to 
create a list of all Federal programs that can be accessed on a single 
Web site.
  Unfortunately, there has been no consistency whatsoever across the 
government in how agencies define the term ``program.'' GAO has agreed 
that the current program list isn't giving us the kind of transparency 
we want because agencies took different approaches in defining their 
programs. The Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act addresses this problem by 
defining the term ``program.''
  GAO has also noted that the current program inventory does not allow 
Congress and the GAO to compare similar programs, which is an obstacle 
to measuring government performance. Additionally, budget and cost 
information is not available for all programs.
  This bill will ensure that agencies provide a full list of their 
programs along with important information about each program. For 
grants and other types of direct assistance, it will provide 
information on how many people a program serves and how many people it 
takes to run it.
  A complete inventory of Federal programs, along with budget and 
financial information at the program level, will allow Congress to 
compare similar programs and identify overlap and duplication.
  The bill has strong bipartisan support in our committee and was 
reported out without dissent. Seeing it to final passage would be a 
good win for this Congress.
  I am pleased to yield back to our colleague from Oklahoma for a 
unanimous consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


  

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