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Editorial: Bill waylaid by old tradition
The Oklahoman
September 7, 2006
GETTING something through Congress is hard enough as it is. So it's regrettable a couple senators think they're entitled to hold up useful legislation with an extra-constitutional practice known around Washington as the "hold."
The victim here is a bill authored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would set up an Internet search engine, like Google, that taxpayers could use to track federal government contract and grant spending.
Speaking on the Senate floor in April, Coburn said the bill would make federal funding more "accountable and transparent. It also would help to reduce fraud, abuse and misallocation of federal funds."
What's not to like? Coburn says the government annually awards about $300 billion in grants to 30,000 groups. Yet federal agencies reported $37.3 billion in improper payments for fiscal year 2005 alone.
You're never going to eliminate all waste and abuse, but transparency would help. Indeed, Alaska's notorious "bridge to nowhere" project probably would be under way now if Coburn and others hadn't shined a little light on it.
Coburn's bill is being waylaid by Alaska's senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens. He and another unnamed senator have holds on the legislation, which means they've told leadership they want the bill put on ice indefinitely. It's a Senate tradition that in this case is contrary to the public's interests.
A Stevens spokesman says the senator is concerned about creating a new layer of bureaucracy and about the cost of Coburn's bill. But Stevens is an old bull appropriator, and appropriators wield power by dispensing money. We rather think Stevens is worried that a grant-tracking mechanism in the hands of the public would impede the usual way of doing things.
Maybe we're wrong. Maybe Stevens' concerns have merit. Fine. Let them play out in the legislative process where senators' positions and votes can be noted for all to see.
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