These are days filled with heated rhetoric, in Washington and around the country, as people endlessly debate what President Donald Trump and other leaders in his administration say or do.

For months, the airwaves have been crowded with people opining, often in a vacuum, what each new White House leak actually means.

This week, we’ll start to see what this administration believes it can actually accomplish. On Tuesday, the Trump administration will release its first full budget request. How you spend money, or don’t spend it, is where the rubber meets the road in Washington. You can change all the policies you want. If you don’t have the money to put that policy in place, you’ve got a whole lot of nothing.

But as much as an administration needs funding to implement its policies, Congress and the taxpayers need clarity on how that money is being spent – and clarity is wanting.

First, there is the issue of secrecy in the value of the contracts to produce the next generation long-range bomber for the Air Force, the B-21. After we gave the secrecy surrounding the B-21 our “Golden Fleece” award last year, my organization has had more fun recently talking and writing about a Congressional requirement for a report on that secrecy. The reason such a serious topic is striking us as funny is that the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office recently told a Bloomberg reporter that the report on excessive secrecy will, itself, likely be secret. You can’t make this stuff up.

Next, we have some largely overlooked language in the huge Omnibus Appropriations Act that funds the federal government in the current fiscal year. My organization, Taxpayers for Common Sense, is currently producing a database on all unclassified cyberspending in the federal budget, so language complaining about lack of clarity federal budget documents in a section dedicated to “Cyberspace Activities” caught our attention. Congress complained that much of the funding is contained to larger programs and funding lines which “limits visibility and congressional oversight.” The language goes on to require more specific reporting in future budget documentation. It is surprising and somewhat troubling that Congress needs to send this kind of direction to the agency.

Finally, there is a recent story in the Washington Post discussing a complicated system the Pentagon uses to purchase fuels. According to this story, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, through the Defense Logistics Agency, purchases fuels and then sells them to the Departments of the Air Force, Army and Navy at a higher rate per gallon. It is alleged the excess then goes into a so-called “bishop’s fund,” used to support other priorities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, such as the Syrian train and equip program.

It’s early days on this story and, of course, with everything else going on in Washington, this may not raise many eyebrows. Of greatest concern is whether the money collected in this slush fund is spent on programs that have previously been denied by the Congress. If that is the case, that’s a true scandal. Remember the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s? Improper or blatantly illegal uses of this fund, if it exists, would follow a similar path.

Every taxpayer should be concerned about a lack of transparency in federal spending. Some things, of course, are legitimately classified. But hiding the bottom line of how much a defense contractor is making to build the B-21, or keeping the Congress from understanding how much money is devoted to cyberspace activities, or building a potential slush fund to evade Congressional prohibitions on certain programs, are issues that should concern all Americans.