Taxpayers Right to Know Act

Floor Speech

Mr. COBURN. I wish to spend a few minutes talking about a bill that passed the House that has 37 bipartisan cosponsors in the Senate that came out of my committee. It is an important transparency item for the American taxpayers called the Taxpayers Right to Know Act.

What most Americans don't realize is there is only one agency that knows how many programs it has--only one. None of the rest of the Federal agencies know how many Federal programs they are running. They can't put them down, can't list them on a piece of paper.

The GAO has recommended for a long period of time--starting about 3 or 4 years ago--that we should be putting this down when we have the truth in transparency and the truth in accountability act and the transparency act with President Obama. We started this process where the GAO would look for duplication and report it to Congress.

We have a bill that has passed unanimously in the House. It is a bipartisan bill that came with a voice vote out of our committee. All it says is that every agency ought to have to list their programs every year so we can know what they are doing. GAO says that will help immensely in terms of eliminating this $200 billion to $300 billion a year in duplication.

We are going to have some unanimous requests later today, and we will have a bill that is on the floor for which the majority leader has once again filled the tree, which allows no amendments whatsoever on the bill.

This bill should be on the floor, should be standing on its own, and should be passed because nobody can honestly object to the agencies not knowing what programs they run, not having a complete list.

I mean, it is counterintuitive that anybody would vote against it. It makes no sense that we don't know that, and we know we need to have it. It is an easy vote for everybody, and the majority leader isn't going to allow an amendment.

So we are not at a new day yet with this present majority leader. This is something that helps every American--Democrat or Republican. It helps us run our government more efficiently, more effectively. It is a good-government amendment, and yet it is not going to be allowed.

I am disheartened that at the end of the year we could actually do some things together that would actually allow us to accomplish real things for the American people that will make a real difference in the long run, but we won't because we don't want to have what was guaranteed to the minority when the Senate was set up--the right to offer amendments.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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