The Fiscal Integrity through Transparency Act of 2008

Rightfully, Americans want to know how Washington is spending their hard earned money. Instead of hidden egregious earmarks and bloated department budgets, our federal budget needs more transparency, oversight and accountability. To aide in these efforts, I introduced the Fiscal Integrity through Transparency Act of 2008.  The FIT Act is a three part initiative to reduce government spending and prevent waste, fraud and abuse. The legislation calls for the government to use the same innovative concepts practiced by entrepreneurs and business, improve productivity while reducing un-needed costs.This legislation would first prevent the House and Senate, without an overriding 2/3 vote, from considering any budget resolution for any fiscal year if the projected total outlays increase more than the mean (equally weighted) of GDP (Real), the Growth of Earnings, and Compensation of Earnings. Which means the federal government can not grow faster then the budget of the average American family.  

1. Next, each Federal department and agency would be required to annually report their total operation costs as well as details on waste, fraud, and abuse during the year to the Comptroller General (intelligence agencies would be required to submit their reports to the House Select Committee on Intelligence. )
2. No later than one year after the bill’s enactment, each Federal department would be required design a plan to reduce its operational costs from $.36 of every $1.00 appropriated to the department or agency to $.15 of every $1.00 (or reduce their operational costs by 41.67 percent).
3. Finally, the bill would require all earmarks received by the Committee on Appropriations (or subcommittee thereof) to be posted on its website at least 14 calendar days before the committee begins marking up the applicable measure. Each posting on the committee website would include the name of the Member requesting the earmark, the cost of the earmark, and a justification of why the earmark is needed.

Please feel free to read the text of the bill. I look forward to your feedback.