The Federal Government Was Told To Make a List of Everything It Funds. 15 Years Later, There Still Isn't One.

What exactly is it that the federal government is doing around here? After well over a decade, the executive branch is still unable to provide a comprehensive answer.

“Each year, the federal government spends trillions of dollars on federal programs that support the American people and address policy goals,” auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) drolly reported this week. “However, it does not have a full inventory of these programs.”

That’s not merely a sad commentary on the sprawling size and eye-watering cost of the government. It’s also a violation of federal law.

Back in 2011, Congress passed, and then-President Barack Obama signed, a law requiring the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to publish an annual list of all federal programs. As the GAO notes, that task has never been accomplished—although the auditors did hand out some faint praise for the “substantial progress” made during 2024.

In an update to the law approved in 2021, Congress gave OMB a deadline of January 2025 to complete its inventory of the roughly 2,700 federal programs. That deadline has now come and gone.

“A comprehensive listing of programs, along with related funding and performance information, would help federal decision-makers and the public better understand what the government does, what it spends, and what it achieves each year,” auditors noted in the report, released Thursday. “It could also be a critical tool to help decision-makers better identify and manage fragmentation, overlap, and duplication across the federal government.”

That was the intention behind the 2011 law, which was a bipartisan effort aimed at improving government transparency and accountability.

“At a time of budget deficits and almost overwhelming national debt, this legislation requires several significant steps that will make government work smarter even as it requires federal agencies to aggressively look for more ways to save taxpayer money,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) when the bill was passed in late 2010.  He also noted how the law would give Congress “better data to help us identify overlapping federal programs.”

In the years since, Congress has cranked up spending to unprecedented levels. After falling in the latter half of the 2010s, annual budget deficits now exceed the levels they reached in 2010 and 2011, when worries about borrowing defined much of the national political conversation.

Having a comprehensive list of all federal programs and their annual goals probably wouldn’t have meaningfully changed the trajectory of spending or borrowing over the past two decades. Even so, the fact that the executive branch has failed to complete this task after 15 years speaks volumes about the status quo in Washington.

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