Information is power, right? Transparency makes for good government, right? So why all the congressional foot-dragging over a bill to expose how our tax dollars are spent?
Sure, the question sort of answers itself. These are congressmen, after all, and even their party affiliation doesn't curb their impulse to conceal as best they can all the grants and contracts for which their constituents ultimately must pay.
Unless you're a maverick such as Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. He's pushing a bill to create a database where taxpayers, using popular search engines from home PCs, can easily find which companies and which nonprofits have been awarded their money.
Interested in how much Halliburton really gets from the government? A few keystrokes will find the figure. Or how much, say, the Sierra Club takes? Ditto. Indeed, as Jason DeParle reports in The New York Times, "A search for the terms 'Alaska' and 'bridges' would expose a certain $223 million span to Gravina Island (population 50) that critics call the 'Bridge to Nowhere.' "
Coburn, a conservative lamenting his party's failure to cut spending, has been joined by Illinois' new Democrat senator, Barack Obama, who wants to showcase activist government. Coburn has the support of right-leaning think tanks and blogospheric pork-busters; Obama hopes to encourage participatory democracy.
Of course, all the information is on public record, but until now it has required dogged probing by policy analysts or journalists to find it. And in an era when politicians routinely demand transparency of the private sector, too many resist their own medicine.
Last month the House passed a bill to create such a database for nonprofit groups, which get about $300 billion in grants, but stopped short of listing the astronomical sums included in contracts to business. This is pro-business ideology gone bonkers.
"Contracts are awarded in a much more competitive environment," Virginia Republican Thomas M. Davis III, told DeParle. The representative, whose district is dotted with private-sector contractors, argues these businesses police themselves whereas grants "are more susceptible to abuse."
Here's a congressman who doesn't want to police his favored constituents. He's his own best argument for casting sunlight on these contracts. Were Davis savvier, he could enlist the support of a new legion of pork-busters, and wean himself off the contractors.
Coburn gets that. Note also that the Oklahoman's laudable effort does not compromise national security, his proposed database keeping with current disclosure rules.
So here's a Congress taking flak for protecting government secrecy, often for the right reason. It would be treasonous to tip off terrorists. The same Congress now has a chance to strike a blow for openness, also for the right reason. Imagine Congress itself, with the help of informed taxpayers, finally blowing up the pork barrel.
