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

U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (NC-05) introduced legislation today to bring more openness and accountability to federal government spending.  Her legislation, the Multilingual Services Accounting Act (H.R. 1715), 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 large, but undefined amounts of taxpayer money to provide 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 complete 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, H.R. 1715, fixes this problem by requiring that 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 advocacy group ProEnglish also endorsed H.R. 1715 as a responsible government accounting practice.