Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5872, the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012 by a 414- 2 vote.  This legislation requires the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to provide detailed information about how it plans to implement the sequestration cuts scheduled to go into effect next January.  The bill mirrors an amendment to the farm bill that passed the Senate last month which requested similar information, highlighting the unease that both chambers have with respect to the scheduled cuts.
Specifically, H.R. 5872 would require OMB to produce a report to Congress within 30 days of enactment identifying which discretionary and mandatory programs would be cut and calculating each program’s funding decrease.  It also requires OMB to list all of the programs which would be exempt from cuts.  CWLA has already produced preliminary estimates of the funding decreases that would result state-by-state from sequestration for a number of child welfare and related programs as well as which programs would be exempt from cuts.  The OMB report required by this bill would be a more official version of this information.