The following is cross-posted at www.fiscalaccountability.org:
Today, Sen. Coburn is offering an amendment to the Legislative Branch appropriations bill that would require the online posting of Senate Member office expenditures. CFA and ATR have sent a letter in support of the amendment to Sen. Coburn copying fellow Senators.
From our letter:
Congressional leaders have long promised taxpayers the most “open, honest and ethical” Congress. However, taxpayers remain unimpressed with the level of transparency provided by Congress. In the wake of the widely publicized scandals surrounding British Member of Parliament disbursements, and following a big story in the Wall Street Journal exposing lack of transparency regarding Member disbursements in the U.S., Speaker Pelosi instructed the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) last month to post member expenditure records online.
The Senate, however, is lagging behind, and your amendment would go far in changing this by requiring the Secretary to post all expenditures by every Senate office online, in a searchable format, within 60 days after the publication of the biannual expenditures report. An added benefit would be that the Secretary would no longer be required to print bound copies of the report, saving taxpayer dollars in the process.
A vote on the amendment could happen between 3:15pm and 3:30pm. Stay tuned!