Blogging HR1: Division A, Title 1, Subtitle B
Amount Appropriated Thus Far: $232,500,000
The theme for Subtitle B is transparency - what kind of reporting requirements are people going to be responsible for if they spend some of the stimulus money? In many respects, this section ties into a point I’ve made a time or two - democratic governments, by their very nature, are inefficient. You have to keep all stakeholders in account, whether they support you or not, and you have to ensure that everybody knows exactly what you’re doing. Now we get to witness what, exactly, that means, in four part harmony.
Part 1 - Transparency and oversight requirements: I’m not going to bother doing a section-by-section assessment of this part because, frankly, most of the sections aren’t that interesting. One item to note, however, is that each Federal agency that plans on spending any stimulus money will have to post their plans on Recovery.gov. Also, contractors are supposed to come up with fixed price contracts, which should, at least on paper, minimize budget overruns and the like.
Part 2 - Accountability and transparency board: Essentially, this part creates a board whose job is to minimize waste, perform audits of various federal agencies, and periodically report to Congress. Interestingly, the Chief Performance Officer will be chairing the board, which makes Obama’s last pick for this new position rather striking. When it’s somebody’s job to make sure that $900 billion is properly spent, it’s probably a good idea to make sure they can handle basic payroll taxes. Of course, this also raises another question: Who chairs the board if Obama can’t find a politically palatable nominee for the position? One moderately interesting section is Sec. 1230, which bumps our funding total up by another $14 million to pay for the board, the Recovery.gov website, inspectors general and travel expenses for the Independent Advisory Panel.
Part 3 - Additional accountability and transparency provisions: Do you think that your company is fraudulently taking money from the stimulus? Well, here’s the part that addresses how you can file a complaint and what sort of protections you have. Also, if you have a stimulus-related contract, the Inspector General pretty much owns you, so don’t get in his or her way during an investigation. Trust me, you do not want to get in the way of the Inspector General.
Part 4 - Further accountability and transparency provisions: This part is also known as the “Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009″, which means that we’ve achieved such a deep acceptance of meta that we’re even allowing legislation to have other bits of legislation inside of them. Unfortunately, much of this part involves various changes to US Code and, not being a lawyer or possessing even a faint understanding of Federal whistleblower law, I’m pretty lost here. One interesting section is Section 1273, listed as “Clarification of whistleblower rights relating to scientific and other research”, which launches into a two page definition of “on the basis of religion” that is, if absolutely nothing else, quite exhaustive. Among other things, you’re apparently not allowed to prohibit discussion of religious content if you allow discussion of political content - at least, I think that’s what it says. Honestly, reading this part reminds me why I went into IT instead of law.
That’s it! Next up… Title II, or “The Pork Strikes Back”.
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HR1, politics, pork | David Colborne | 
February 5, 2009 12:24 pm
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