COST Act
Latest action · Jul 28, 2017 Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Progress
Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.
- IntroducedJul 28, 2017
- Passed HouseNot reached
- Passed SenateNot reached
- To the PresidentNot reached
- Became lawNot reached
Summary
Cost of Services and Translations Act or the COST Act
This bill requires federal agency Chief Financial Officers to include multilingual services accounting information in their mandatory annual reports to the agency head and to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The bill defines "multilingual services" to include: (1) services provided by interpreters hired by an agency; (2) services resulting in additional expenses which an agency provides to assist its employees or contractors to learn a non-English language; (3) agency preparation, translation, printing, or recordation of materials in a language other than English; and (4) services provided or performed for the federal government by agency employees or contractors that require speaking a non-English language that result in wage differentials or benefits provided by the agency.
The bill requires the annual financial management status report of the OMB to certain congressional committees to contain a Multilingual Services Expenses Report that includes: (1) a summary and analysis of the multilingual services accounting information prepared by each agency Chief Financial Officer, and (2) a description of any changes to the existing financial management structure of the federal government needed to establish an integrated individual agency accounting of all multilingual services conducted by each agency.
The OMB shall issue guidance that an agency Chief Financial Officer must follow in compiling multilingual services accounting information.
Cosponsors
Members who signed on, in the order they did.
Actions 2
Everything that happened, newest first.
- Jul 28, 2017Introduced in House
- Jul 28, 2017Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Subjects
Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Government Operations and Politics.
Text 1
Each version as it was printed, newest first.
- Jul 28, 2017Introduced in House
Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.