{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/articles?ID=341de686-137f-4f9b-b8e0-ee8965d50bc7", "Portman, Warner, Issa, and Cummings Joint Op-Ed: DATA Act Expands Transparency and Accountability for Federal Spending", "2013-12-17", "2013", "2013-12", "Republican", "House", "OH", "Rob Portman", "P000449", "www.portman.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 In case you missed it, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) wrote a joint Op-Ed in The Hill to highlight the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA), legislation that would expand transparency and accountability for federal spending by requiring standardized reporting of federal spending to be posted to a single website.\r\nExcerpts are included below and the full Op-Ed can be viewed here.\r\nThe DATA Act will shed light on government spending  The Hill  December 16, 2013   By Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)\r\nTransparency is critical to our democracy, especially for a federal government that spent about $3.5 trillion last year.\u00a0 Policymakers and taxpayers should be able to quickly answer some basic questions about federal spending, like how much did we spend, and who received our money?\u00a0 Determining this very basic information can take countless hours of work, if it is able to be determined at all.  \u2026\r\nBut hopefully, those days are almost over.\u00a0 The four of us have teamed up on an important bipartisan bill that modernizes the way the federal government collects and presents spending information.\u00a0 The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act, will shed additional light on the federal government\u2019s finances and leverage modern technology to give the taxpayers the transparency over federal spending they deserve.\r\nThe DATA Act will ensure that the information collected by the budget analysts, accountants, and grant and contract officers is combined, reconciled, and presented in an easy-to-use way.\u00a0 Here is how it will work.\r\nFirst, our legislation will expand the USAspending.gov site to include spending data for all federal funds\u2014by appropriation, federal agency, program, and function. Currently, it covers only grants, contracts and other federal awards.\u00a0 This feature is important because there is currently no place to find and compare all government spending.\u00a0 The information also will be made available in downloadable, easily-accessible format.\r\nSecond, the DATA Act will set government-wide financial data standards.\u00a0 Currently, there are no consistent standards, which makes much of the data on USAspending.gov confusing and unreliable.\u00a0 Without consistent data standards, taxpayers and policymakers can\u2019t compare apples to apples.\r\nThird, the DATA Act will reduce reporting costs for entities that are awarded taxpayer dollars. The current reporting systems are duplicative and frustrating.\u00a0 States and organizations like universities are awarded hundreds of different grants from dozens of federal agencies each year.\u00a0 Oftentimes, they must file financial reports on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis to each of those agencies on each of those grants.\u00a0 The current system is fractured; the state or university may be required to maintain completely different systems to file what is ultimately a very similar report.\u00a0 If this reporting were streamlined, our institutes of higher education and our state and local governments could direct more funding to programs and less to overhead costs.\r\nFinally, the DATA Act will make other efforts to enhance transparency-through-technology, like the President\u2019s Open Data Policy and the modernization of the Government Performance and Results Act, truly useful.\u00a0 We can post performance metrics for every federal program on Performance.gov., and we can post all data sets collected by every agency on Data.gov, but without information about where taxpayer resources are going, there is no context for policymakers and the American people to make informed decisions\u2026", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "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://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/articles?ID=341de686-137f-4f9b-b8e0-ee8965d50bc7"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5129330568015575, "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"}