Expose Special Interest Tax Breaks to Public Scrutiny

No 'special interest' tax breaks database yet

Updated: Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | By Louis Jacobson

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that his administration "will ensure that any tax breaks for corporate recipients — or tax earmarks — are also publicly available on the Internet in an easily searchable format."

The promise didn't specify whether the provisions would be publicly accessible as bills were being written or only after they had been sent to the president. But this issue is moot because no such database exists yet.

The administration has put notable emphasis on increasing transparency. For instance, on Jan. 21, 2009 -- one day after he was inaugurated -- Obama issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, instructing the director of the Office of Management and Budget to issue an Open Government Directive. On Dec. 8, 2009, the OMB issued the directive. In it, the OMB said that "each agency shall take prompt steps to expand access to information by making it available online in open formats," adding that "the presumption shall be in favor of openness (to the extent permitted by law and subject to valid privacy, confidentiality, security, or other restrictions)." It sets timetables for providing data to the public, with the first coming just 45 days after issuance.

In addition, the public can now obtain financial disclosure forms for executive branch officials -- though at least for now, the forms have to be requested individually, rather than being immediately downloadable from the Internet. Finally, the White House is now posting visitor logs on the Web.

But references to the specific promise to provide transparency for tax breaks does not appear in searches of Whitehouse.gov, Google or Nexis. In addition, at least one transparency watchdog said he has not heard about progress on this promise. So we will call it Stalled.

Sources:

Office of Management and Budget, " Open Government Directive ," Dec. 8, 2009

E-mail interview with Jim Harper, director of information policy studies, Cato Institute, Dec. 18, 2009