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The question is whether President Donald Trump will sign the legislation into law once it arrives on his desk. Trump vowed earlier this year not to sign any bill that reaches his desk until the Senate approves the SAVE America Act, legislation that requires aspiring voters to present official identification and proof of U.S. citizenship when they arrive at their polling place.

The SSSA deletes an ambiguity in federal law that resulted in billions of dollars obligated without specific congressional approval to be awarded via Other Transaction Agreements (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. But a senior congressional aide who requested anonymity did find a way to access SAM, and what that aide found illustrates why the SSSA received bipartisan support in Congress.

Only three federal departments, however, list their SSSA awards on SAM, including the Department of War (DOW), Department of Interior (DOI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but thus far in Fiscal Year 2026, between them, the trio have entered into 4,367 OTAs valued at more than $13.1 billion. And curiously, the 78 OTAs listed under DOI were actually issued by a special component of HHS known as ARPA-H, for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health.

The ARPA-H program was launched by President Joe Biden in 2022 as a health-focused version of the defense-focused Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that does super-sensitive work primarily for DOW. The largest of the ARPA-H OTAs listed under DOI in SAM went to specialized outfit known as Every Cure, Inc. Every Cure specializes in repurposing existing drugs to address diseases other than those they were first developed to treat.

“The number one contract from HHS/Interior is to a California AI drug repurposing group called Every Cure, Inc. If you type them into USASpending, [it] looks like they get no money. Nothing comes up. If you track Every Cure Inc. in the Interior contract files in SAM.gov, you see they will get up to $76 million from HHS ARPA-H — $76 million just kinda hidden from public view. If you Google them, the company publicized their award from ARPA-H. Normal people just couldn’t find that on USASpending.gov,” an aide said in documents provided to The Washington Stand.

But, as Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the chief advocate of the SSSA and the Senate’s most active enemy of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, explained in an August 7 floor speech, why there is much more to the OTA transparency issue than one obscure California drug research outfit.

“Bureaucrats, however, have been hiding tens of billions of dollars distributed through secret spending arrangements known as Other Transaction Agreements, or OTAs, by not publicly disclosing these expenditures on USAspending.gov. 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.

“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 [DOW] Office of the Inspector General (OIG) also found the Pentagon doesn't even have an accurate count of OTAs or their dollar values,” she said.

Ernst was joined in co-sponsoring the SSSA by Senators Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). Peters is the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC), and Hassan is a member of the panel. On the House side, Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) was the principal sponsor of the House companion version of the SSSA, while Rep. Jim Paneta (D-Calif.) was a co-sponsor.

When the Senate voted August 7 to approve the measure by unanimous consent, the House bill, which was passed there in July, became the final version. The Senate officially informed the House of its action in approving the lower chamber’s version, and it is now up to House officials to send it to the White House. No comment was received when TWS asked the White House Press Office if the president will sign the bill.

Ernst, who is not seeking re-election in November, explained the complicated situation during her floor speech. “As a matter of fact, the bill that I had passed through this chamber, I would love to have it as … a Senate bill, and I would love to see my name at the top of the bill rather than a House bill. The companion bill was passed by the House. So, again, I would love to see my name at the top of the bill, and it listed as a Senate bill.

“I am in the last six months of my final term in the U.S. Senate. I would love to have more of my legacy items with my name on them, but I told my staff that it is more important that we get these bills done. I don’t care if it is a House bill. I don't care if this has my name all over it. The important thing is that when we have good pieces of legislation put in front of us and that we worked hard in a bipartisan manner, in a bicameral manner, and it is good for the American people, that we move forward with those bills.”