Taxpayers Right to Know Act

Floor Speech

Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I first wish to spend a few minutes talking about my colleague and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The last 2 years have been a real pleasure on my part, and I have grown to have a great friendship with the chairman of the committee. I can truly say in our committee we have done a lot of great work. We have both compromised on a lot of issues to try to move the country forward, and to him I am thankful for that. I don't think either of us have had to break on any principles we have had to be able to do that. I think our committee has been a model in terms of doing bipartisan bills and on bipartisan approval of nominees. For him, I would say I appreciate his leadership this past year. He has the unfortunate attribute of having the same initials I do, so it is somewhat confusing on our committee. But maybe that is why we have been as successful as we have.

I also wish to recognize the hard work of so many of the staff members on both sides, the work they put in, and the cooperative nature under which they have worked.

We have before us a bill we are trying to clear called the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act, and it is actually a continuation of a bill that Senator Carper, myself, and several others--including the President--started when we started the transparency act back in 2009. This follows along with the DATA Act which was passed this year.

What this bill does is says the American people ought to know where the money is being spent, and so it says the agencies are going to list the programs they have. It is done in a stepwise fashion so it doesn't put too much pressure on OMB as they try to implement it. I believe at this time we are waiting to make sure we have clearance for this before we ask for a unanimous consent.

I yield my remaining time to the chairman of the committee, Senator Carper.

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