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Building off past efforts Congressman Cuellar continues his fight to improve government performance, transparency, and customer service
WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) announced he included language in the Fiscal Year 2017 Financial Services & General Government (FSGG) House Appropriations bill that would bring transparency, improve performance and customer service across the federal government.
Congressman Cuellar has worked endlessly throughout his career in public service to cut down on wasteful spending, increase efficiency and improve interaction between the federal government and civilians.
Rep. Cuellar speaks at the House Appropriations Committee markup of the Financial Services & General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2017 on June 9 regarding good governance language he included in the bill. Click here to view video.
The language secured by Congressman Cuellar in the FY FSGG House Appropriations bill has passed the Appropriations Committee and must now be voted on by the full House of Representatives. Specifically, Congressman Cuellar’s language would:
· Publish all federal contracts and grants in one place. In an effort to make transparency in government simpler, Congressman Cuellar included language that would direct the Fiscal Service to coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to publish all unclassified vendor contracts and grant awards for all federal agencies on one central platform, the new USAspending.gov.
· End payments to deceased persons by directing the OMB to work with agencies across the federal government to ensure processes are in place to stop payments to deceased people, such as within the U.S. Social Security Administration.
· Direct the OMB to develop a central online repository where all federal agency budgets and their respective justifications are publically available in one website, in a consistent, searchable, sortable and machine-readable format.
· Direct the OMB to work with federal agencies to link their performance plans with their funding requests in fiscal year 2017.
· Congressman Cuellar secured language to ensure federal agencies have specific performance measures in place and that they are working to improve the quality of customer service in order to better use taxpayer dollars and improve the relationship between the federal government and the people it serves.
“Taxpayers are right to hold the federal government accountable for spending and transparency,” said Congressman Henry Cuellar. “Every day, millions of Americans interact with the federal government for services and benefits they need. Eliminating wasteful spending and improving efficiency and customer service within our government for the benefit of my constituents has been a priority of mine since I entered office. I thank Rep. Andrew Crenshaw (R-FL-4), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee for Financial Services and General Government, and House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. José E. Serrano (D-NY-15), for their help in passing this language to improve our federal government.”
In 2010, Cuellar passed landmark government reform legislation, the Government Performance Results Modernization Act, which continues to streamline the federal government, integrate resources, and eliminate wasteful redundancy today. The 2010 law required agencies to identify ambitious goals and perform frequent performance evaluation. Agencies have submitted those reports on a quarterly basis since the law’s passage in 2010 and report a wide range of benefits including improved interagency collaboration, identification existing evidence gaps, and the opportunity to better inform resource allocation decision using evidence, highlighted in the Analytical perspectives of President Obama’s FY2017 budget.
