In their newly released, talking-point-heavy "Pledge to America," House Republicans say they are offering "a plan to stop out-of-control spending and reduce the size of government" if voters put them back in charge in November. One area of government the plan doesn't call for reducing, however, is the Department of Defense (DOD). In fact, the new conservative governing proposal explicitly exempts the DOD budget from their proposed cuts to bring federal spending back to "pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels."

As Yogi Berra's redundant saying goes, "It's déjà vu all over again." Back in 1994, congressional Republicans unveiled what they called the "Contract with America." The Contract was chock-full of policy proposals intended to shrink the size of government, kneecap agencies' ability to protect the public, and decrease the burden on taxpayers, especially the rich.

Yesterday, Jack Lew, President Obama's nominee to replace Peter Orszag as Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, went to Capitol Hill for two nomination hearings. Both the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) have jurisdiction over the nomination, necessitating the two hearings on Lew, who was also President Clinton's last OMB director. Too bad we learned little about the nominee during either hearing.

When Jack Lew responds to the Senate committees that share jurisdiction over his hearing, there's a possibility that he'll be asked about the federal budget, but we hope he'll get a chance to talk about government openness as well. OMB should continue to push the envelope on federal spending transparency. Under Orszag, OMB has implemented a number of policies that have significantly improved public access to federal spending information, including implementing Recovery Act recipient reporting and putting subrecipient reporting data on USAspending.gov. Lew should help make Obama's vision of an era of unprecedented federal transparency a reality.