Bush Hops on the Transparency Bandwagon
Transparency Is Good. Taxation is bad.
Here’s George W. Bush explaining how Republicans are more transparent than Democrats:
“Another key area of difference between my Administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress is my support for meaningful earmark reform. Earmarks are spending provisions that are slipped into bills by individual members of Congress, often at the last hour and without discussion or debate. It’s not surprising that this leads to unnecessary Federal spending. And the problem is growing. Over the last decade, the number of earmarks has more than tripled.
“In January, I proposed reforms that would make the earmark process more transparent, end the practice of concealing earmarks in so-called report language that is never included in legislation, and cut the number and cost of earmarks by at least half. My Administration has also developed the government’s first public database of earmarks, and we’ve posted them on a website: earmarks.omb.gov. On this website, we will also be releasing information on new earmarks, because this Administration wants you to see where your tax dollars are being spent.”
For a nation that’s been watching West Wing for years, the concept of spending on unrelated projects being added in order to garner enough votes to pass a bill is fairly easy to understand. This sort of budgetary blackmail takes place all the time, and Bush is quite right when he says the process shouldn’t be allowed to flourish in the shadows, away from public examination.
For an example of the kind of transparency this database creates, take a look at the entry for Optimizing Adaptive Warrior Performance, a $2 million project out of Mississippi State University:
“This effort procured dedicated magnetic resonance imaging system and conducted training and initial studies.”
And a $3.3 million project called Next Generation Mobile Electronic Warfare Support will go toward:
“Dwevewolpment (sic) of Mobile ELINT Collection Prototype”
You can’t buy transparency like that. Thanks to this valuable resource, Americans will now be better able to track the spending tacked onto bills that go through Congress, as long as they can figure out what an ELINT collection prototype is.
Transparency is a great concept. However, when the whole budgeting and allocations process is designed to obfuscate what’s going on, it only gets you so far toward openness and true public oversight.
Previous posts:
Advice on Openness for Civil Servants
Cutting through the Bafflegab
Photo by Eric Foltz
Tags: government, military, spending, usa, george bush, transparency, jargon, language, congress
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POSTED IN: Communication Tactics, Writing
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