Executive Transparency Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The bill creates a new section 2955 in title 5 requiring specified executive officials to provide an annual briefing to corresponding congressional committees in the form and manner those committees require. The covered officials include the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security; the Attorney General; USTR; DNI; OMB; EPA, SBA, FEMA, CDC, and CMS administrators; the Federal Reserve Board Chair; the CIA Director; the FBI Director; the SEC Chair; the FTC Chair; the NRC Chair; and the IRS Commissioner. Each official is mapped to appropriations committees plus relevant authorizing or oversight committees.
Who Benefits and How
Congressional committees receive recurring access to senior executive officials, which can improve oversight of agency budgets, policy implementation, intelligence, financial regulation, health programs, disaster response, trade, and tax administration. Members and committee staff benefit from a statutory schedule for annual executive-branch briefings rather than relying only on ad hoc hearings or requests.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Covered cabinet officers, agency heads, intelligence leaders, financial regulators, and administrators must prepare and deliver annual briefings in whatever form and manner the corresponding committees require. Agency legislative-affairs staff must coordinate scheduling, materials, and follow-up. Congressional committees must absorb recurring briefing logistics and oversight workload.
Key Provisions
- Adds new title 5 section 2955 requiring annual briefings to Congress.
- Requires 30 specified executive officials to brief listed House and Senate committees each year.
- Directs briefing obligations to appropriations committees plus agency-specific authorizing, oversight, intelligence, judiciary, finance, banking, veterans, homeland-security, and health committees.
- Amends the chapter table of contents to add the new annual briefing requirement.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Adds a title 5 requirement that 30 cabinet officers, agency heads, financial regulators, intelligence leaders, and other executive officials provide annual briefings to the congressional committees with jurisdiction over their agencies.
Key Policy Areas
Government Operations, Congressional Oversight
Primary Purpose
Adds a title 5 requirement that 30 cabinet officers, agency heads, financial regulators, intelligence leaders, and other executive officials provide annual briefings to the congressional committees with jurisdiction over their agencies.
Policy Domains
Substantive provisions
Identified Gains
- House oversight committees
- Senate oversight committees
- Appropriations Committees
- Congressional committee staff
Identified Costs
- Cabinet officials
- Agency heads
- Intelligence leaders
- Financial regulators
- Agency legislative-affairs staff
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Introduced in House
Mr. Lawler introduced the following bill; which was referred to …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Agency heads, Cabinet officials, Congressional oversight committees
Positive-direction: Congressional oversight committees, House oversight committees, Senate oversight committees
Negative-direction: Agency heads, Cabinet officials, Financial regulators, Intelligence leaders
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology