The Washington Times today runs a story about the Porkbusters effort to smoke out the secret holder of a Senate transparency and accountability bill:

Sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, and Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, the bill would require the administration to create a searchable Web site that would list the name and amount of any federal grant, contract or other award of money amounting to $25,000 or more.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, tried to win speedy passage just before the Senate left for its summer break, but at least one senator objected anonymously.

Now Porkbusters.org, a Web site dedicated to exposing wasteful government spending, is conducting a public campaign to smoke out the obstructor or obstructors, while blogs on both sides of the political spectrum have weighed in, demanding action on the bill. Mr. Frist has also vowed to get into the act, promising to try to pass the bill again when Congress returns from its break next month.

“For reasons of policy and politics, many bloggers are rightly outraged that S. 2590 was shot down when I attempted to bring it up for a vote prior to the August recess,” Mr. Frist wrote in an entry last week on the blog of Volpac, his political action committee (www.volpac.com).

The Federal Times reported that one senator has a “secret hold” on the bill. Holds are an unofficial part of Senate parliamentary tradition that allow a single senator to delay action anonymously.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 9:25 am and is filed under blogosphere, pork. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.