Transparency and Efficiency Bills Clear House Oversight Panel

Several bills designed to increase transparency and the effectiveness of government emerged from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, among them legislation to expand subpoena powers of inspectors general, curb presidential post-tenure allowances and promote greater use of evidence in policymaking.

The bills passed largely by voice vote, the only breakdown in bipartisanship coming during debate on the All Economic Regulations Are Transparent (ALERT) Act (H.R. 1759), which was approved after a party-line roll call after Democrats unsuccessfully sought to amend it.

“With the national debt over $18 trillion and rising, the more we know about what government is doing, the easier it is to make informed choices,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who convened the full committee business meeting as chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee.

He defended the ALERT Act, which would require agencies and the White House to post estimates of costs and burdens of regulation more frequently. Criticism came from Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking member of the full committee, who called the bill a “redundant” drain on scarce agency resources that stresses costs without including benefits.

All five bills were sent to the House floor. Besides the ALERT Act, they were:

• The Inspector General Reform Act (H.R. 2395), a retread from the past Congress that would give some 14,000 staff who work for inspectors general long-sought new power to subpoena recalcitrant witnesses following two higher-level reviews, while accelerating the inspectors generals community’s ethics investigations;
• The Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act (H.R. 1831), which would create a bipartisan commission to advise Congress and the president on how to expand use of data to evaluate effectiveness of programs and tax expenditures, a goal stressed by the Obama administration in its fiscal 2016 budget;
• The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act (H.R. 1777), which would cap the pensions given to former presidents at $200,000 indexed for inflation and provide an annual expense allowance of $200,000, which would be reduced once that president’s post-White House earnings top $400,000 without affecting security; and,
• The Safe and Federal Websites Act (H.R. 451), which seeks to protect the personally identifiable information of Americans dealing with federal agencies by upping certification requirements.