The time has long since passed for the federal ernment to report how taxpayers’ money is spent as quickly as it actually spends it. On his first full day in office, President Obama promised to create “an unprecedented level of openness in ernment” that would “disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.”  I intend to help him.

That’s why I proposed legislation last week to create real transparency that would allow ernment officials and the public to track the use of TARP funds and unlock the value of toxic mortgage assets. H.R. 2392, the ernment Information Transparency Act, is a real step towards implementing the kind of change and transparency that Americans expect from Washington.

If passed, this act would greatly simplify and standardize the llection, analysis and dissemination of business information llected by federal agencies with the implementation of a 21st century technology known as Extensive Business Reporting Language (XBRL). In fact, XBRL is fast beming the standard means of mmunicating business information quickly and aurately. There is no good reason why the United States ernment should lag behind.

XBRL is already used as a reporting standard in approximately 40 untries around the world, and all U.S. banks are currently required to disclose information to the FDIC in this format. Moreover, the Securities and Exchange mission recently approved a final rule mandating the use of XBRL for all public mpanies, with some required to mply starting in June of 2009.

But as it now stands, Uncle Sam is using an abacus to balance his books in a calculator age.

Since President Obama took office and announced that his administration would launch a new era of ernment transparency, an astounding $787 billion “spendulous” package and a rerd budget proposal of $3.53 trillion have passed through ngress. Yet to date, there has been no real acuntability for how the taxpayers’ money is being spent.

By implementing the XBRL format for financial information that is already required to be disclosed across the federal bureaucracy, the general public will finally have aess to aurate and up-to-date information on how their money is being used by bailed-out financial institutions. Essentially, H.R. 2392 is a desperately needed shot of WD-40 to the rroded gs of acuntability to taxpayers.

Now that’s change we can believe in.