This week there has been much controversy over a Senate bill, approved July 27th of this year, called the Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, S2590 (here is a link to the bill in pdf).

The brainchild of increasingly admirable Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), with numerous bi-partisan sponsors, this bill would require that the federal government create a website search-engine, like Google, where the public may find out precisely whom the government is giving your tax-dollars to.

This is a good idea, in my opinion. It isn't perfect, as I would like instead a listing of recipients with a search function, rather than just a search engine, and it is not apparent in the wording of the bill that the website would have anything but a search engine, which means you have to know the name of the entity you wish to know about already. It may be that the provision has escaped me, however, and it is true that any transparency in government spending at all is a tremendous step in the right direction, so it is a minor quibble.

There is also a competing House bill, HR5060, sponsored by Reps. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Tom Davis (R-VA), but the House bill only allows for making the grants databases already in place more accessible to the public, nor does it include the search engine concept. The Coburn bill, however, includes contracts, as well as grants, contracts being the more important and interesting of the two, and the Coburn bill includes sub-contracts and sub-grants as well. Over-all it is the better of the two bills.

The controversy is that the Senate bill was put on secret hold just before the annual August recess. The bill had been "Hotlined" which means that unless a Senator secrety objects to the bill, it passes without a vote. Well, sure enough it was halted right before recess by a Mystery Senator, who was today unmasked as non other than Republican laughingstock Ted Stevens (R-AK).

This, unsurprisingly, is the man in charge of regulating the internet who recently displayed his... unique "Tubes vs Dumptruck" theory, is noted for his "Incredible Hulk" tie, threatened to resign if the "Build a bridge to no-where in my state" bill was not passed, has used Bill O'Reilly style tactics when he presides over commitees, actually cutting Senators' mics when he tells them to shut up and in most cases has made an embarassment of himself whenever he opens his mouth. I'm not a big fan of his, in case you couldn't tell.

The Offices of Senators Coburn and Stevens are now engaged in a back and forth with the media, Stevens' office claiming "At the time he placed the hold he notified Sen. [Tom] Coburn and his staff and identified several questions we had with the bill. Two weeks ago Sen. Coburn named Stevens as having a hold on the bill, so we don't consider it a secret." The Spokesman for Stevens' office continued "Sen. Stevens has a series of concerns and questions about the bill. He wants a cost benefit analysis to make sure it doesn't create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and not meet its purpose... He prefers to handle things at the member to member level or at the staff level, that's the way Sen. Stevens has always operated... This wasn't in any way secretive," the spokesman, Aaron Saunders said. "We're baffled as to why it's been called a secret hold."

However, John Hart, spokesman for the office of Tom Coburn disputes this, saying "This hold was a secret, his(Stevens') office has ignored media and bloggers' calls about this issue for weeks. We had to ask Stevens if he was the hold. His staff has still not met with us."

"Senator Stevens sits on the committee where this bill was considered and never raised any objections because he skipped the hearings," Hart continued. "His specific concerns were addressed at the hearings he skipped, and his office has yet to meet with us to discuss his concerns despite repeated requests." Indeed.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Coburn and Stevens have clashed. In October of last year Sen. Coburn led the charge against the ear-marked appropriation of $453 Million for two Alaska bridges, which had been tacked on to a highway bill. One of the bridges would connect Gravina Island, population 50, to the mainland. Coburn wanted to redirect the money instead to rebuild the Interstate 10 Bridge across Lake Ponchartrain near New Orleans, a major bridge damaged by Katrina.

Stevens responded saying "I don't kid people, if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state . . . I will resign from this body." Coburn's measure was defeated 82-15 (May I suggest that before voting this year you take a look here at how your Senators voted on this travesty). $223 Million were slated for the Gravina bridge, the other $230 Million for the "Don Young's Way" bridge - which was projected to total about $1.5 Billion. Congress later caved in to the pressure of the public and retracted Stevens' money, luckily. although his state's Federal Highway budget was not reduced, and he is allowed to build these bridges anyway, using the federal money for the state budget. I wonder if this incident could have, perhaps, influenced Stevens' "Series of concerns and questions about the bill".