The House of Representatives passed a bill requiring the Office of Management and Budget to ensure there is a free searchable website providing access to federal financial assistance awards. This searchable database will not cover disclosure of federal contracts, however. H.R. 5060, co-sponsored by Reps. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Tom Davis (R-VA), passed the House on a voice vote on June 21. Currently, information about government-wide federal funds, such as grants and loans, is available only in aggregate form through the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) published by the Census Bureau each year. The Census Bureau publishes CFFR tables by geography, agency, and program for each fiscal year, but the database itself is not searchable. It should be noted that the CFFR also covers federal contracts, federal salaries and wages, and direct payments to individuals, but that information is not required to be disclosed by the Blunt bill. Current reporting of grants in the CFFR uses information from the Federal Assistance Award Data System (FAADS), which covers most of the domestic grant obligations, and data from various agencies not reporting under FAADS. The CFFR also uses data from the Federal Aid to States, a Census Bureau report covering actual grant expenditures of the federal government to state and local governments, which is maintained by federal agencies pursuant to OMB Circular A-11, a circular that addresses the preparation and submission of budget estimates to OMB. Presumably all of the data from the CFFR - minus data about contracts, federal salaries and wages, and direct payments to individuals - will be included in the new searchable database. However, the largest portion will likely come from FAADS. While the FAADS data can be downloaded from the Census Bureau in quarterly files, it is not searchable. Like the CFFR, the Census Bureau provides online tables for the FAADS data; in this case, by type of assistance for each state or for the nation. According to FAADS, $450.4 billion was spent on grants and cooperative agreements in FY 2004. Most (87 percent or $390.6 billion) of the federal grants went to local, state or tribal governments (see chart below). Only 4 percent or $16.4 billion went to nonprofit organizations. Yet this seems to be the focus of many conservatives, who call for greater disclosure - and is believed to be the objective of the Blunt bill. Historically, conservatives have attacked grants to nonprofits as a means to "end the welfare state," to downsize government, or to eliminate "welfare for lobbyists," as they say. But it seems the Blunt bill does not really get at the meat of federal spending. By comparison, while nonprofits received $16.4 billion in grants in FY 2004, the federal government spent roughly $340 billion in federal contracts. Yet the Blunt bill does not cover improved disclosure of information about federal contracts. Specifics about the Blunt Bill The Blunt bill requires disclosure of information about all grants, loans, loan guarantees, property, cooperative agreements, interest subsidies, insurance, food commodities, direct appropriations, or other assistance available through any "existing federal database." It does not include amounts received as reimbursement for services rendered to individuals. After a number of attempts to get Blunt to modify the bill to include disclosure of federal contracts, the final bill does not include such language. The initial bill only covered financial assistance to state and local governments and to nonprofit organizations. The final bill, however, covers these entities as well as any other type of business. According to the FAADS data, in FY 2004, for-profit and other entities (including individuals) received $8.2 billion in grants and cooperative agreements. The bill requires that within 30 days of financial assistance awards, each award be available through a website in a format that allows searching in a number of ways, including by name of entity, amount of money, year, program category, federal department, and other fields. For each entity that receives federal assistance, there will be 10-years worth of data about the entity, including an itemized breakdown of information about past assistance, starting with grants received in 2006. The bill requires the database to include a list of subgrantees, although it does not require the information be tied to specific awards or to how much money the subgrantee receives. How this information will be collected is unclear and could be very problematic. As described above the largest recipient of federal grants is state, local and tribal governments. And the largest recipient within this category is states. It would be very difficult for states to identify sub-recipients given that federal funds are often commingled with state funds before they are re-awarded, and neither the awarding agency nor the recipient entity knows exactly how many dollars are from the federal government. Moreover, certain types of federal assistance such as block grants give states the discretion to spend the revenue as it chooses so long as it is within the scope and purposes of the block grant. In principle, it would be surprising to suddenly require the collection of sub-recipient information for block grant funds. The Blunt bill also requires the results of all searches to be downloadable along with the entire database on a quarterly basis. The bill requires OMB to make the database available to the public one year after the bill becomes law. Another Approach Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Barack Obama (D-IL), Tom Carper (D-DE), and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced a bipartisan bill in the Senate, called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590), which makes all federal awards - grants and contracts - available in a single searchable website. It is supported by more than 70 organizations, including conservatives such Heritage Foundation and National Taxpayers Union and progressives such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Greenpeace. Other supporters include the American Association of People with Disabilities, American Library Association, California First Amendment Coalition, Electronic Freedom Frontier, and OMB Watch (read OMB Watch's analysis of the Coburn/Obama bill). Coburn expects to hold a hearing on the bill some time this summer in his Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security Subcommittee. He has been working closely with OMB and supporting organizations and states to fashion a strong bipartisan bill that provides disclosure to achieve meaningful accountability.