{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://lawler.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5116", "Lawler Pushes to Restore Accountability in the Executive Branch", "2025-12-04", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "House", "NY", "Michael Lawler", "L000599", "lawler.house.gov", "lawler", "https://lawler.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 12/4/25\u2026 Today, Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) introduced the Executive Transparency Act, legislation that requires Cabinet secretaries and the heads of major federal agencies to provide annual briefings to relevant congressional committees.\n\nThe legislation mandates annual in-person briefings from more than two dozen top officials including but not limited to cabinet-level leaders, the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and the heads of agencies like the EPA, CIA, CDC, IRS, and Federal Reserve.\n\n\u201cAnnual briefings shouldn\u2019t be optional. They should be a baseline responsibility for every senior federal official. This is about oversight, accountability, and ensuring the American people, through their representatives, have the information needed to keep the government working effectively,\u201d said Congressman Lawler.\n\n\u201cNew Yorkers are deserve transparency from Washington, and they want their representatives empowered to do real oversight. This bill delivers exactly that. Earlier this Congress, I was encouraged and grateful to have Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent present at two of my committee hearings. We all deserve the chance to hear from these decision makers,\u201d concluded Congressman Lawler.\n\nFull text of the bill can be found HERE.\n\nCongressman Lawler is one of the most bipartisan members of Congress and represents New York's 17th Congressional District, which is just north of New York City and contains all or parts of Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Westchester Counties. He was rated the most effective freshman lawmaker in the 118th Congress, 8th overall, surpassing dozens of committee chairs.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://lawler.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5116"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8066010195761919, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}