The government’s official public source for tracking and publicizing the spending data — USAspending.gov — has encountered serious issues with accuracy and quality control. Image: Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock.com
The major spending bills passed during the Biden administration will create millions of jobs over the next decade, invest in major infrastructure projects, and bolster the technology market. But to the detriment of public trust in government, we often cannot say with certainty what kind or how many jobs are created, or which communities are helped because the necessary data is not readily available or even collected.
In fact, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that inconsistent spending data submitted by agencies inhibited them from projecting accurate achievements of large federal programs like Medicare. Separately, they found that obligations — contracts or grants that require payments from designated agencies — worth over a trillion dollars were not linked to key spending information, like who and what it was used for, due to vague award descriptions and missing data.
The effects of such meager spending transparency are ubiquitous. If policymakers in the executive and legislative branches are not able to track where federal dollars get allocated at the local level, it creates opportunities for wasteful spending and abuse.
For example, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund allocated more than $250 million to California and more than $222 million to Texas, above the average of what the rest of the nation receives. However, we cannot find where or how these funds were used within the states on USASpending.
Consider, too, President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, a plan to set aside funding for certain programs to revitalize and aid historically marginalized communities from underinvestment and disproportionate burden by pollution. Oftentimes, underserved communities do not have the capacity and resources to apply for competitive funding. So, when the initiative was created, the government should have been cognizant that their oversight duties would be two-fold. In addition to ensuring that funds reach appropriate communities, they also need to ensure the funds are accessible.
The tracking appears to be falling short: Just in 2024 alone, GAO has released three publications calling for communication, guidance, and tracking improvements for the Justice40 programs. The government has yet to respond or to make public data available to show that the funding under this initiative is reaching intended communities.
Until we’re able to track how the money was spent, officials won’t know whether the initiative is achieving its goals or if changes must be made to ensure communities in need can access the funds.
The problems with federal spending data aren’t a secret. The government’s official public source for tracking and publicizing the spending data — USAspending.gov — has encountered serious issues with accuracy and quality control.
The GAO has been recommending improvements to the three main agencies in charge of this data — Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA) — for years. And Politico echoed similar concerns in a review of recent major spending bills when they encountered roadblocks in finding the amount of money actually spent.
Even White House officials do not rely on USAspending.gov as their primary source for Invest.gov, which is an interactive map on the administration’s website showing the amount of grant funds available to the public under the four large spending bills. Instead, that website uses press releases, industry associations, and news articles to map spending across the country. The fact that the public is not privy to rudimentary information about where their tax dollars go erodes the public’s trust in the administration’s attempts to advance equitable policies.
The administration should implement commonsense reforms that give Americans more detailed insights into these programs so they can see how the government is spending their hard-earned tax dollars.
There are steps executive branch officials could take today to improve spending transparency. They can mandate all federal agencies to report federal awards — such as grants, loans, and contracts — in a central system, and direct OMB to improve reporting requirements. Treasury and GSA should also improve USAspending.gov to make it more usable.
By implementing these measures, the government would make federal spending data easier to navigate thanks to standardization and a central system, the information would be more accessible and user-friendly, and policymakers would be equipped with more specific data that better portrays how the government is investing in our communities. This and all future administrations must improve federal spending transparency to ensure that government spending is in fact promoting equity initiatives and telling complete stories of these investments to constituents. It is an important civic duty as leaders.
Janice Luong is a Policy Associate at the Effective and Accountable Government (EAG) team at the Project on Government Oversight. She assists the Director of Effective and Accountable Government in monitoring and executing POGO policy objectives and advocacy campaigns.
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