Sponsor
Roger Williams
Representative · R-TX
Representative · R-TX
The bill increases transparency and oversight of Federal Reserve spending and priorities, benefiting taxpayers, researchers, and regulated entities, but it also creates administrative costs, reporting burdens, and risks of revealing sensitive supervisory priorities.
Taxpayers and the public gain clearer, function-level visibility into how the Federal Reserve and Reserve Banks spend money and staff time, improving transparency and accountability of Fed operations.
Researchers, policymakers, and oversight bodies can identify the Fed's top research priorities and resource allocations by expenditures and staffing, aiding oversight and more informed policy debate.
Consumers and regulated financial institutions may see indirect benefits because clearer reporting on supervision and payments spending improves accountability for bank oversight and payment services.
The Federal Reserve will incur administrative costs to collect, classify, and publish the new detailed expenditure and FTE data, costs that are ultimately borne by the public through the Fed's budget/remittances.
Publishing detailed expenditures tied to proposed or finalized rules and guidance could reveal sensitive supervisory or policy priorities, risking exposure of internal deliberations and complicating Reserve oversight work.
Public disclosure of granular staffing and spending by function may force Reserve Banks to reclassify activities and divert staff time from core operations to compliance and reporting tasks.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Fed Board and each Reserve Bank to report annual expenditures and FTEs by activity, top research areas, and prior‑year rule‑related spending.
Official title: To amend the Federal Reserve Act to add requirements to the annual report of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 1, 2025 by Roger Williams · Last progress May 1, 2025
Requires the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal Reserve Bank to expand their annual report to Congress to include detailed, itemized annual expenditures and full‑time equivalent (FTE) employee counts by specific activity categories, the top three research areas by spending and FTEs, and prior‑year spending tied to proposed or finalized rules, guidance, and policy statements. The new reporting requirements are added to the Federal Reserve Act and take effect two years after enactment.