Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to celebrate today's launch of USAspending.gov. This is an important day, an important milestone on the path to greater openness and transparency in the Federal Government. This site helps us to achieve a very simple and powerful vision: a vision that, in a democracy, the people ought to know what their Government is doing: how the Government is raising and spending money, how it is making and enforcing law, how it is supporting projects, how decisions are being made, and how results are being evaluated. It is not a Democratic vision or a Republican vision. It is a commonsense vision of Government transparency and accessibility. It is a vision that rejects the idea that Government actions and decisions should be kept secret or classified. It is a vision that believes that information is at the heart of democracy and that we all must resist the dangerous trend of withholding or classifying or burying information that the American people have a right to know and need to know if they are to hold their leaders accountable. I have been very troubled by the extent to which America has become a nation of government secrets.”