Two hugely significant new weapons for government investigators fighting waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending gained bipartisan approval in Congress in recent weeks, including one to stop secret outlays and the other to end boondoggle projects before their costs skyrocket.

The Stop Secret Spending Act (SSSA) was approved by the Senate and House earlier this year, and President Donald Trump signed the measure into law September 11. The SSSA requires all federal departments and agencies to post on the USASpending.gov website budget and related data on previously undisclosed contracts known as Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs).

The USASpending.gov website was created by the Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) of 2006. September 26 is the 20th anniversary of the FFATA, which was co-sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and then-Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.). The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and a number of other non-profit advocacy groups from across the political spectrum that jointly sought passage of the FFATA are co-hosting a conference on Friday in the nation’s capital marking the anniversary. 

As The Washington Stand reported August 18, “the SSSA deletes an ambiguity in federal law that resulted in billions of dollars obligated without specific congressional approval to be awarded via [OTAs] and without being listed on USASpending.gov, the landmark website designed to make all non-classified federal expenditures available for public inspection. The OTAs are not technically ‘secret,’ because many are listed on another government website, the System for Award Management (SAM), but accessing that database is extremely difficult to access for those outside of the executive branch.”

Eliminating that ambiguity was important, according to Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the chief SSSA proponent, because government bureaucrats “have been hiding tens of billions of dollars distributed through [OTAs]. … The Pentagon alone has obligated $77.7 billion for thousands of OTAs over just the past five years through over 30,000 hard-to-track contracts” Ernst told Senate colleagues in an August 5 floor speech.

“The lack of transparency with OTAs is having a real impact. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Pentagon ‘cannot assess the extent to which OTAs are delivering capabilities to the warfighter.’ The Department of War (DOW) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) also found the Pentagon doesn’t even have an accurate count of OTAs or their dollar values,” Ernst added.

Ernst was joined in co-sponsoring the SSSA by Senators Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in the Senate, while Reps. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) were the major co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

The second major anti-waste, fraud, and corruption measure approved by Congress is the Billion-Dollar Boondoggle Act (BDBA) of 2026, which passed the Senate on a unanimous vote in December 2025, and was approved on a voice vote in the House of Representatives September 16.

The BDBA was prompted by Ernst’s exposés last year of multiple federally funded projects that were far behind schedule and way over budget. The legislation “requires taxpayer-funded projects that are more than $1 billion over budget or more than five years behind schedule to be made public,” Ernst said in a statement shortly after the House action. “Going a billion dollars over budget isn’t a rounding error, it’s a financial trainwreck at taxpayers’ expense. Taxpayers deserve transparency, and this legislation will shine a light on these boondoggles and hold Washington accountable for its out-of-control spending.”

The BDBA’s principal House advocate was Ernst’s Iowa colleague, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who said “Iowans work hard for their money, and they expect Washington to be a good steward of every taxpayer dollar. When billion-dollar projects go years over schedule and billions over budget, taxpayers deserve answers and accountability. The BDBA will shine a light on these financial train wrecks and make sure Congress and the American people know where their money is going.”

Among the worst boondoggle examples cited by Ernst were these:

• The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) electronic health record system upgrade that has tripled in cost from an initial $16.1 billion price tag to $49.8 billion. Additionally, flaws with the new system may have contributed to the deaths of several veterans and caused harm to others.
• The Bay Area Rail Transit Extension that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to sneak funding for into a COVID relief bill has ballooned in costs from $4.7 billion to $12.8 billion. At nearly $2 billion per mile, it’s been labeled “the worst new transit project in the U.S.”
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Artemis moon mission launch booster and engine contracts that have already run $6 billion over budget. The real budget is a black hole because “NASA hasn’t established an official cost estimate.”

Trump is expected to sign the BDBA into law when he is back in town following an address to the U.N. General Assembly and a private meeting with New York’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The SSSA and BDBA come as the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is repeatedly making headlines with big busts of fraud networks in federal benefits.

“Since the Task Force began its work, it has uncovered nearly $230 billion in fraud, stopped $56 billion in fraudulent payments that would have gone into the pockets of criminals, enforced more than $55 billion through indictments, settlements, and civil penalties, and secured hundreds of indictments and convictions,” according to the Trump White House.