News Home

Contact: 202-225-2071

Bill requires reporting of all spending on non-English gov’t services

U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (NC-05) introduced legislation this week that will bring more openness and accountability to federal government spending.  Her legislation, the Multilingual Services Accounting Act (H.R. 1414), requires all federal government bureaucracies to annually report how much taxpayer money is spent to provide government services in languages other than English. 

“Our government spends untold sums providing government services in a multitude of languages—with little or no accountability for how this money is spent and with no information on the value of this spending,” Rep. Foxx said.  “American taxpayers deserve better.  They deserve a full accounting of how their government spends their tax dollars.”

Federal government agencies currently do not have to report how much money they spend to provide government services and publications in languages other than English.  Foxx’s legislation fixes this problem by requiring that each of the 24 federal bureaucracies report multilingual expenditures in their annual reports to the Office of Management and Budget. 

Without this basic accounting information, the federal government has no way of knowing how much it spends to provide multilingual services.

“Responsible government must be transparent and accountable,” Foxx said.  “By shining the light on how much money is spent on non-English services we can ensure tax dollars are not squandered on wasteful projects.”

The Multilingual Services Accounting Act (H.R. 1414) is supported by the advocacy groups U.S. English and ProEnglish as a responsible accounting practice.  A growing number of states also have passed laws requiring state government agencies to account for spending on multilingual services, such as Wisconsin did in 2008.

"All too often, the provision of multilingual government services has been a decision made by a single bureaucrat or bureaucrats without the consent of Congress," said Mauro E. Mujica, Chairman of U.S. English. “I want to thank Rep. Foxx for her dedication to government accountability and to the American people."