S.2852 was recently introduced by Senator John Comyn (R-TX) and has a laudable goal of creating a publicly available and searchable website of “Earmarks” - those wasteful spending items Congress uses to repay local contributors and thus launder tax dollars into campaign contributions. This bill shares many of the objectives of the Legislative Accountability Amendment, which would provide increased transparency and accountability of both legislators and citizens on all bills, not just earmarks, but S.2852 does not actually comply with it. However, rewriting it to be in compliance is not difficult.

First, the purpose statement needs to be rewritten - the phrase “and other purposes” is not a specific purpose.

The purpose of this Act is to make available to the citizens the spending habits and appropriations processes of the Federal government, thus increasing the accountability of the government to the people and the responsibility of the people to oversee their government.

Second, the “Findings” section should be removed - findings are facts and as such are not rendered either true or false by a vote of Congress.

Third, Section 4 and Section 5 should each be spun off into separate bills, as while they are thematically connected with the Earmarks web site, they are in fact different creations and should each be handled on their own merits.

Get PDFs of the bill text as introduced and as rewritten to be compliant .

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