| Description |
Ideally, there would be a nice, neat connection from budget authority right down to every outlay of funds, and back up again
from every outlay to its budget authority. These connections, published online in useful ways, would allow public oversight
to blossom.
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Proposed budget authority is pretty darn opaque. The bills in Congress that contain proposed budget authority are consistently
published online - that's good - but they don't highlight budget authority in machine readable ways. No computer can figure
out how much budget authority is out there in pending legislation. Existing budget authority is pretty well documented in
the Treasury Department's FAST book (Federal Account Symbols and Titles). This
handy resource lists Treasury accounts and the statutes and laws that provide their budget authority. The FAST book
is not terrible, but the only form we've found it in is PDF. PDF is terrible. Congress can do a lot better, but because some
of the publication basics are there, we give it a C-.
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The administration gets a D for publishing the obscure FAST book in PDF. |
