The House successfully passed H.R. 3279, the Open Book on Equal Access to Justice Act, last week, which is bipartisan legislation that aims to strengthen the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) by reinstating the tracking and reporting requirements for money paid out by the federal government under this law.
The bill was introduced by Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar along with Representatives Doug Collins (R-GA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Kurt Schrader (D-OR) and Collin Peterson (D-MN)
According to Gosar, the Equal Access to Justice Act, originally passed by Congress in 1980, was intended to reimburse veterans, small businesses and other American citizens for attorneys’ fees and costs incurred for suing the federal government.
Gosar argues that H.R. 3279 requires important disclosure information relating to the amount of fees and expenses awarded by federal courts when the United States loses a case or settles with a non-federal entity to be published online in a searchable database.
EAJA is funded by a permanent appropriation and as a result Congress does not control the amount of money that that comes from this fund. EAJA claims are awarded from agency budgets as well as the U.S. Treasury. EAJA originally included tracking and reporting requirements but these were removed by Congress in 1995, according to Gosar.
Prior to 1995, EAJA payments were approximately $3 million dollars annually. Gosar says that unfortunately, EAJA has operated in the dark for more than 20 years and payments have skyrocketed. The Government Accountability Office recently confirmed that we don’t even know the totality of these costs as most federal agencies don’t even bother trying to compile this information.
This bipartisan legislation will track how much money is paid out under EAJA, and from which agencies.
“Unfortunately, a well-intentioned law that was meant to protect the little guy has been hijacked by extremist environmental groups who are profitting off the taxpayer dime. Shamefully, these special-interest lawyers are billing the federal government for exorbitant rates as high as $750 an hour. Shockingly, we don’t even know the true costs of this abuse because the government stopped tracking these expenditures in 1995,” stated Gosar.
“The bipartisan legislation passed by the House today sheds some much needed light on an appalling process that has operated in the dark for more than 20 years. Special-interest groups shouldn’t be getting rich off American taxpayers by filing frivolous lawsuits.” Gosar concluded, “Commonsense necessitates that, at minimum, we should track the sources and recipients of these taxpayer expenditures.”
Arizona State Representtive Mark Finchem stated, “And therein lies the reason that the House of Representatives must have control over every nickel spent by the federal government. A permanent appropriation? That is a bastardization of the authority reserved under the Constitution for the House of Representatives. If they would only look at the constitutionality of the underlying statute, we might well see the backbone needed to eliminate such an abuse of the American taxpayer. This is the behavior of the federal government that is absolutely infuriating and I am glad that we have a Congressman from Arizona willing to take on these special interests. As an Arizonan I appreciate your attention to detail Mr. Gosar. I hope that Congresswoman McSally will be as ready to fight for this as Mr. Gosar.”