Amending Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999
AMENDING FEDERAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 1999 -- (House of Representatives - June 21, 2006)
BREAK IN THE TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join with the chairman of the Government Reform Committee, Chairman Davis, in consideration of H.R. 5060, which calls for the creation of a new searchable database of all Federal grants to be made publicly available on the Internet.
I have always had serious concerns about any decision to bring a bill to the floor without the opportunity for hearings or other committee consideration, but I have been very pleased with Majority Whip Blunt and Chairman Davis' willingness to work together over the past week to address problems with the bill and to make revisions.
As revised, the bill will require the Office of Management and Budget to develop a database that would be useful to individuals and organizations researching Federal grant funding. The database will provide a complete record of Federal grant funding, including information about grantees and the purpose and requirements of each grant. The requirement that the database be fully searchable and available for download is also most important.
As Members of Congress, we have a responsibility to increase public understanding of Federal spending and public access to information about how taxpayer dollars are spent. Currently the public has access to a data system, the Federal Assistance Award Data System, that provides limited information about domestic grants, but this system is unwieldy and difficult to use. Under this bill public oversight of Federal spending will increase.
The bill is a step in the right direction, but it is missing a key component that is essential to public oversight. I had hoped that the legislation we are considering today would have required that information on Federal contracts be included in the database or in a similar separate database of Federal contracts. As Federal contract spending increases, there is a vital need for the public to be able to track and understand this spending.
As with the Federal Assistance Award Data System for grants, there is a publicly available database of contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, but it, too, is plagued with problems. This data system is often incomplete, and, like the grant data system, is unwieldy and difficult to use. Currently it is virtually impossible for the public to accurately track Federal contract spending.
I understand that Chairman Davis has agreed to work on improving the FPDS with Ranking Member Waxman and others in order to make Federal contract information freely and easily accessible to the public. I, quite frankly, look forward to this collaboration, and I hope that when the new database of Federal grants is made available on a Web site for the public to search and download at no charge, there will also be a new FPDS system or other new contracts database made available that is just as accessible and usable as the new grants database that we are dealing with.
I want to again commend the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and its ranking member, Mr. Waxman, for the tremendous leadership that they both provide in a very bipartisan way. I think that is one of the reasons that you see us down here so often with bills that have come through that committee ready for passage on the floor.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN THE TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov/