Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced a bill recently, S.2590, that would create a web-based searchable database accessible to the public that would detail all federal grants and contracts.  This would shine a bright light on the pet projects of our Congress.  Well, apparently someone in the Senate doesn’t like the idea.

Before the entire Senate could vote on the bill, an unknown number of Senators placed an anonymous hold on the bill.  This is within the Senate rules and is an effective way of killing a bill.  This hold could be used to maintain the relative veil of secrecy that surrounds federal government spending.

But fortunately, citizens across the country have sprung into action, calling the offices of their Senators in an effort to smoke out the secret holder(s).  Porkbusters has been keeping a tally of which Senators are on record as saying they are not a secret holder.  I’m glad to see my two Senators, Landrieu and Vitter, are in the clear.  At this point only eight Senators have not denied placing the hold on the bill.  Hopefully as the pressure mounts, the mainstream press will give this more attention.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.