Who could possibly oppose a Taxpayer Transparency Act?
Isn't transparency - a popular political rallying point - what taxpayers want and deserve?
On their respective federal and state levels, U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and state Rep. Paul Curtman, R-Union, are counting on an exuberant response from taxpayers.
Each is promoting a Taxpayer Transparency Act to require government to disclose that advertising - including print, radio, television, video, Internet and social media - is being paid by tax dollars.
The disclosure, however, does little more than reinforce what already is common knowledge among taxpayers.
What taxpayers want and deserve is transparency that reveals where abusive and wasteful spending is occurring.
The transparency proposals, in principle, address the same concerns discussed for more than 200 years about congressional franking privileges.
Franking privileges - authorized by the American Continental Congress in 1775 and enacted by Congress in 1789 - allow members of Congress to send mailings as "official business" as a means to inform constituents.
Subsequent problems, controversies and lawsuits have focused primarily on two issues. Is the privilege being abused and what authority is responsible for making that determination?
Blunt revealed a motivating factor for his proposal when he said: "I think the health care ads were one of the things that, probably, got the U.S. House and Senate engaged last year. There was a lot of money spent encouraging people to sign up for health care - which may be a laudatory and fine thing to do. But there's nothing wrong with telling people that their tax dollars are being used to pay for this ad, to tell you what you should do for your own benefit."
It may come as no surprise that spending for Obama's Affordable Care Act was a launching point for a Republican transparency initiative.
But government spending is fairly widespread. Adding a disclosure that taxpayers are bearing the cost reveals little.
Information that would be useful to taxpayers would be: total costs; an unbiased, professional cost-benefit analysis; and/or a designated authority to evaluate and disclose abusive spending. All of this, of course, would require greater spending of tax dollars.
We have no quarrel with passing taxpayer transparency acts, but unless they are comprehensive and informative, don't expect us to toss confetti and shout: "Accountability problem solved."