The Daily Background

Yesterday, reports floated around that Senator Robert Byrd (D) had joined Senator Ted “the internet is not a big truck” Stevens (R) in putting a legislative hold on the excellent transparency-oriented budget legislation from Senators Barack Obama (D) and Tom Coburn (R).

Senator Byrd now says he is fine with the legislation, has lifted his hold, and didn’t understand it when it was first introduced. Senator Stevens is all alone now in his opposition to the clever bill which would allow taxpayers to search an online database to see where their tax money is going.

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd admits that he placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would make uncovering the Byzantine world of federal contracting as easy as typing a Google search.

[…]
Byrd merely wanted more time to evaluate the legislation that would create a new database of some $2.5 trillion in federal spending on contracts, loans, financial assistance and insurance.

“Senator Byrd wanted time to read the legislation, understand its implications, and see whether the proposal could be improved,” Gavin said.

Byrd has released his hold, now that there “has been time to better understand the legislation,” Gavin said.

More here. This has turned out to be quite an embarassment for Senator Stevens, with CNN doing a pretty good report on it the other day, which you can watch here (YouTube). They hit Stevens pretty hard, and gave major props to the blogs while they were at it.

P.S. Read about Senator Stevens’ twisted logic in opposing the bill here. Incredibly ironic.

Filed under: Tax Money, Z-TDB Blog