The bill
Stop Secret Spending Act of 2025
S. 872, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Equity & Hedge Funds.
Sponsored by
Sen. Ernst, Joni [R-IA]
ID: E000295
Follow the money
The bill
S. 872, 119th Congress — read as touching Private Equity & Hedge Funds.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
23 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Introduction" section, p. 40-42 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Held at the desk.
June 14, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. The "Stop Secret Spending Act of 2025" - because who doesn't love a good oxymoron? Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
The bill claims to increase transparency in federal spending by requiring other transaction agreements (OTAs) to be reported on USAspending.gov. How quaint. As if the real issue was a lack of reporting, rather than the fact that our esteemed lawmakers are more interested in lining their pockets and those of their corporate donors.
Now, let's look at the numbers - or rather, the lack thereof. The bill doesn't specify any total funding amounts or budget allocations, because who needs accountability when you're doling out taxpayer money? We do know that the Secretary of the Treasury will have to publish a report on unreported funding, but don't hold your breath for any actual transparency.
As for key programs and agencies receiving funds, it's a laundry list of usual suspects: the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and various other federal agencies. Because what's a spending bill without a healthy dose of pork barrel politics?
Notable increases or decreases from previous years? Ha! Don't make me laugh. This bill is all about maintaining the status quo - or rather, increasing it by a few percentage points to keep the special interests happy.
And then there are the riders and policy provisions attached to funding. Oh boy, where do I even start? The Inspector General reports will now be submitted every two years instead of annually, because who needs regular oversight when you're busy cooking the books?
The fiscal impact and deficit implications? *chuckles* Let's just say that our lawmakers are more concerned with getting re-elected than with balancing the budget. This bill will likely add to the national debt, but hey, who's counting?
In conclusion, the "Stop Secret Spending Act of 2025" is a joke - a bad one, at that. It's a thinly veiled attempt to pretend that our lawmakers care about transparency and accountability, when in reality, they're just trying to maintain their grip on power and line their pockets with taxpayer money. The real disease here is corruption, and this bill is just a symptom of a much larger problem.
Diagnosis: Terminal stupidity, with a side of corruption and a healthy dose of hypocrisy. Prognosis: Poor. Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism and a strong stomach to deal with the inevitable fallout from this legislative abomination.
Sen. Ernst, Joni [R-IA]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 5 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: P000595
Top Contributors
10
ID: L000575
Top Contributors
10
ID: M001242
Top Contributors
10
ID: M001244
Top Contributors
0
No contribution data available
ID: H001076
Top Contributors
10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 59 nodes and 35 connections (39 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $420,010
Showing top 22 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 3 harmed.
Section 2(a) and (d) imply increased transparency requirements for other transaction agreements, which may affect private equity firms involved in such agreements
Section 2(d)(1)(B) mentions 'relevant agency' which could include defense agencies, implying increased reporting requirements for defense contractors
Section 3(b)(1)(A) and (c) discuss data quality and verification, potentially affecting cybersecurity firms involved in federal contracts
For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Sen. Ernst, Joni [R-IA])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.
— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes; — 8 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists; l Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege”; and l Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.3 Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress. Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars. The Administrative State holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of Congress, and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional fairy tale spun by the Washington Establishment to protect its turf. Members of Congress shield themselves from constitutional accountability often when the White House allows them to get away with it. Cultural institutions like public libraries and public health agencies are only as “independent” from public accountability as elected officials and voters permit. Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide behind the agencies; as his many executive orders make clear, his is the respon- sibility for the regulations that threaten American communities, schools, and families. A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it. Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and pol- icymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State.
— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes;
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.
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