The Daily Background

The other day, I wrote about a piece of legislation authored by Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator Tom Coburn which was meant to make government spending more transparent by providing a searchable internet database for government spending projects. It sounds like a really cool idea, I must say. Well, after the bill passed through committee with a unanimous voice-vote, the bill appeared to be on its way to being signed into law.

That was, until an anonymous Senator put the bill on secret hold. For the last couple of days, the blogosphere has been contacting Senators offices, and trying to figure out who it was that put the bill on hold. Guess who it was? Senator Ted “series of tubes” Stevens (R-Alaska, anti-net neutrality foe of the blogosphere).

Senator Stevens’ staff (try saying that ten times fast) claims that the hold on the legislation was not secret, just that nobody knew it was him. Not even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Senators’ staff say the Senator (who is known for once infamously earmarking millions of dollars for the “bridge to nowhere”) has lots of real questions that he wants real answers for.

Well it turns out, the Senator was actually on the committee that approved the legislation. Only thing was, he skipped every single meeting, missing all the answers to his questions. So he used his senior status in the Senate to put a non-secret (but really secret) hold on the legislation.

ThinkProgress has more reasons why Senator Stevens might really be opposed to this legislation.

Crooks and Liars has a CNN report (multiformat video).

Filed under: Tax Money, Z-TDB Blog