August 18, 2006 9:32AM # An Anonymous Affront to Transparency By Brandon Arnold --- SHARE As the *Federal Times* [reports](http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2018089), a bill designed to promote transparency in the federal government is being held up by a very non-transparent Senate procedure. An anonymous senator has placed a “hold” on a bill that would create a publicly accessible federal database to track all federal grants and contracts. As Chris Edwards [explains](https://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb_0718-38.pdf), it’s a meritorious piece of legislation. However, this bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Tom Coburn is indefinitely stalled and might not reach the Senate floor this year. The House has approved a similar, though slightly watered-down, version of this legislation that would monitor federal grants, but not contracts. With 29 bipartisan senators co-sponsoring Coburn’s bill and roughly 100 diverse groups supporting it, you would think that this legislation would pass easily. Think again. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).