And who wants them kept secret during the appropriations process, and why?

Republicans cried foul today because the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill (affectionately known on the Hill as “Thud”) came out of conference, and the following section had been quietly added:

SEC. 193. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds provided in or limited by this Act may be obligated or expended to provide a budget justification for any fiscal year concurrently with the President’s annual budget submission to Congress under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code, to any congressional committee other than the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations prior to May 31 following the date of such annual budget submission.

What does that mean? It means that you would not be allowed to see this document (big pdf) or any of thousands of other pages of “budget justifications,” which are submitted by agencies and departments to the appropriations committee each year, unless you happen to be a member of the appropriations committee. The example linked here is for one part of the Department of Energy budget.

I have a line in to House Appropriations Chairman David Obey’s (D-Wis.) folks to find out who added this curious provision and why. I will not claim with false outrage that these “budget justifications” have been useful to me in the past — this is the first I’ve ever heard of them (although I will probably refer to them in the future). Yet secrecy in the appropriations process would strike me as a bad thing no matter what.

I can’t imagine why the Congress would prevent taxpayers and even non-appropriators in Congress from seeing these documents while the appropriators are busy carving out each department’s budget…