October 30, 2019
House Committee on Oversight and Reform
United States House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC, 20515
RE: Support for the Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act of 2019, H.R. 4894

Dear Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Jordan, and members of the House Committee
on Oversight and Reform:
We, the undersigned organizations, write in strong support of the Congressional Budget
Justification Transparency Act of 2019, H.R. 4894, which would provide needed transparency
and accountability to agency spending proposals, known as Congressional Justifications
(“CJs”). CJs are plain language explanations of agencies’ plans to spend federal funds, written
at a high level of detail and in language a layperson can understand.
The proposed legislation provides for a central, online repository for all federal agency
Congressional Justifications, managed by OMB. It requires agencies publish their CJs online no
later than two weeks after submission to Congress. It also provides for congressional and public
access to the documents and requires their publication as open format machine readable and
text searchable.
Many benefits arise from a central website for all agency CJs. It makes it possible to
view agency CJs submitted over multiple years, so that one can see how an agency’s proposals
and plans have evolved. It allows for comparisons across multiple agencies. Additionally, it
ensures that CJs will not disappear from public — and congressional — view. Finally, it
encourages the publication of past CJs on the website, which would expand the baseline for
comparisons.
A March 11, 2019 report by the Demand Progress Education Fund found that some
executive branch agencies were not consistently complying with OMB’s requirement to publish
their CJ on their own website1. There is no way to say how many agencies failed to comply with
the publication requirement because OMB does not publish a comprehensive list.
It is also not uncommon for oversight committees and even agency staff to struggle with
finding previous submissions. While OMB, in response to several years of Congressional

1

“Feds Lag in Publishing Funding Requests,” Demand Progress Education Fund (March 11, 2019),
available at
https://s3.amazonaws.com/demandprogress/reports/Congressional_Budget_Justification_Report.pdf​.

 pressure2, has just launched a repository for CJs,3 it is incomplete,4 does not provide a list of
agencies that must submit CJs, and does not host the documents itself. This legislation solves
those problems. We urge the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to take
up the legislation at the next available opportunity and to report it favorably.
We applaud Representatives Mike Quigley and Doug Collins for their hard work on this
bill, and we welcome the opportunity to discuss our support for the Congressional Budget
Justification Transparency Act. Please contact Daniel Schuman, policy director, Demand
Progress, at 240-237-3930 or Daniel@DemandProgress.org.
Sincerely,
Campaign for Accountability
Campaign for Liberty
Center for Responsive Politics
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW)
Coalition to Reduce Spending
Data Coalition
Defending Rights & Dissent
Demand Progress
Essential Information
Free Government Information
Government Accountability Project
Government Information Watch
GovTrack.us
Lincoln Network

2

Lorelei Kelly, Beeck Center for Social Impact
+ Innovation at Georgetown University
National Coalition for History
National Freedom of Information Coalition
National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund
National Security Archive
National Taxpayers Union
Open the Government
Project On Government Oversight
R Street Institute
Senior Executives Association
Society of Professional Journalists
Sunlight Foundation
Taxpayers for Common Sense
TechFreedom

See “Online Budget Repository”, Report, Financial Services and General Government Appropriations
Bill, FY 2018 (H. Rept. 115-234), p. 31, available at
https://www.congress.gov/115/crpt/hrpt234/CRPT-115hrpt234.pdf​; “Online Budget Repository”, Report,
Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, FY 2019 (H. Rept. 115-792), p. 27,
available at: ​https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/115th-congress/house-report/792/1​;
“Congressional Budget Justifications,” Report, Financial Services and General Government
Appropriations Bill, FY 2020 (H. Rept. 116-111), p. 38, available at:
https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FY2020%20FSGG%20Appropriations%20Act,%20
Report%20116-111.pdf
3
USASpending.gov, available at ​https://www.usaspending.gov/#/agency​.
4
“USASpending Publishes (Some) Budget Requests In A Central Location,” Demand Progress Education
Fund (August 9, 2019), available at:
https://firstbranchforecast.com/2019/08/09/usaspending-publishes-some-budget-requests-in-a-central-loc
ation/