The Obama campaign released a white paper this morning on his new government ethics and transparency proposals. Some of them he's spoken about before -- like open budgeting, televised regulatory hearings and the appointment of a government chief technology officer; what's below is new:

-- create a new agency to identify and track corporate welfare recipients, he'll give the Office of Government Ethics officers (4,000) in total more authority and the agency the ability to make binding regulations. Note: the OGE will become the clearinghouse for all public records about ethics in the executive branch.
-- eliminate "ideological performance goals
--work to increase the president's authority to change or eliminate programs entirely; he "will also experiment with giving government managers the ability to work with their teams to establish goals and to give bonuses when those goals are met."
-- reduce layers middle management in Washington
-- strengthen whistleblower protection laws
-- cut federal spending on contractors by 10 percent, which would say, in his view, $40 billion.
-- end the use of no-bid contracts and forbid the granting of federal contracts for tax delinquent companies


The white paper can be read here.


A