In front of the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced the introduction of legislation meant to diminish the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The much anticipated bill is titled as expected, the DISCLOSE Act, which stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections. Four Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, including Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Al Franken (D-MN).

We're generally pretty happy with the new Open Government Directive on federal spending transparency. Specifically, we're pleased to see that the administration is moving to comply with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA). Among other things, FFATA required sub-award reporting information on USAspending.gov, the government's spending website, as of 2009. But for more than a year, the Obama administration has not complied with this aspect of the law (in defense of the current administration, the Bush administration also did nothing to add sub-award data onto USAspending.gov, making this a bi-partisan screw-up). The new memo changes that, and mandates that agencies submit sub-award data to USAspending.gov starting October 1 of this year. The only problem is that the Open Government Directive memo limits the reach of this sub-award reporting.