Industry rattled by House passage of DATA Act
A bipartisan bill aimed at standardizing federal spending data has passed the House of Representatives and is on its way to the Senate — and it’s sending off alarm bells in the travel industry.
The DATA (Digital Accountability and Transparency) Act would require listing all federal spending on the USAspending.gov website, which is overseen by the Treasury.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the sponsor of the Senate bill, said that "transparency is critical to our democracy — especially for a federal government that spends more than $3.7 trillion each year."
In this tough economic climate, he noted, "we should be doing all we can to ensure that taxpayers and policymakers can follow the money to hold our government more accountable."
But fears of what the bill will mean to government travel and meeting programs has the travel industry on edge.
Among other issues, the bill slashes budgets for conferences, and caps the cost of any single conference at $500,000, for example.
The Global Business Travel Association issued a statement claiming that the bill, H.R. 2061,"would threaten key agencies’ ability to effectively operate and ultimately result in lost jobs."
What the government really needs to do is simply "uniformly follow everyday practices adopted at thousands of U.S. companies – optimizing the use of travel dollars by effectively implementing policies that drive appropriate traveler behavior."
While acknowledging that "there is absolutely no doubt that lavish conferences, vague travel policies, and inappropriate travel expenses are a waste of our valuable tax dollars," GBTA said the DATA Act goes about it the wrong way.
"These proposed cuts and restrictions would severely impact federal agency operations," it said.
US Travel Association president Roger Dow called the bill a "slash-and-burn approach, and noted that "sequestration has already drastically reduced travel budgets" to such a point that "there is nothing left to cut."
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