In a NOTUS report about how billions of taxpayer dollars have become untraceable in the Trump administration, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said the lack of transparency in this White House has led her to resort to getting information from newspapers instead.
Murkowski told NOTUS that it was in mid-September when she first learned of the administration pulling nearly $350 million in funding for institutions serving Alaskan and Hawaiian Natives.
While NOTUS "attempted to trace the money appropriated for more than 100 government programs to understand where taxpayer dollars are going, only to hit dead ends repeatedly," Murkowski also said she has "no idea" where that money is going. The senator blames the administration for a massive lack of transparency.
“I don’t think that there has been anything close to the transparency that we would hope,” Murkowski said. “We’re kind of finding out about it at the very last minute.”
When asked if she felt confident that she can get the information she needs, she said, “No! No. I get it by reading something in the newspaper.”
The administration, NOTUS reports, also uses newspapers to share information.
When House and Senate appropriations staff from both parties "jointly requested the EPA turn over the specifics of the 20 grants terminated in February," a senior Republican appropriations staffer replied in an email. "Some of them are on Page 6,” he noted, linking to a story in the New York Post, with whom the agency had shared the information.
"The Trump administration “has demonstrated an unprecedented lack of transparency and responsiveness to routine oversight requests,” an anonymous Democratic aide told NOTUS.