"Every American Has the Right to Know"

In April 2006, a young Democratic senator from Illinois and a graying fiscal conservative from
Oklahoma introduced legislation to create a searchable database of federal monetary awards, essentially a Google for government spending. The site would empower citizens to monitor how their tax dollars are spent and uncover waste. President George W. Bush signed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act five months later and USASpending.gov was born in 2007. While co-sponsor Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican, pushed for greater financial transparency until retiring in December 2014, many say the other co-sponsor, now President Obama, ran out of steam. 

Read more about the push for transparency here.