House Passes Information Quality Assurance Act 362-1, Demanding Federal Agencies Clean Up Their Data

The House delivered one of its most lopsided votes of the 119th Congress, passing H.R. 6329, the Information Quality Assurance Act of 2025, with 362 members voting yes and just one voting no. The bill forces the Office of Management and Budget to rewrite the rulebook on how federal agencies produce, use, and share the data that drives policy — a rulebook that hasn't been meaningfully updated since 2002.

Why It Matters

The federal government makes decisions every day — on regulations, spending, public health, the environment — based on scientific, economic, and statistical information. The H.R. 6329 vote results tell you something: both parties now agree the system for ensuring that information is reliable is broken. The data quality legislation requires agencies to rely on the "best reasonably available" information and evidence when crafting rules and guidance. It mandates that OMB update its government-wide quality guidelines, creates a mechanism for the public to flag bad data, and requires OMB to report complaints to Congress. For the American public, the promise is straightforward: the rules that govern your life should be built on solid facts, not shoddy analysis.

The Big Picture

A 25-Year-Old Framework, Finally Getting an Overhaul

This bill traces its roots to the Information Quality Act of 2000, a provision slipped into an appropriations bill that told OMB to set standards for government data. OMB issued guidelines in 2002. Agencies wrote their own versions. And then — largely nothing. For more than two decades, the framework sat untouched while the information landscape was reshaped by AI, big data, and collapsing public trust.

A previous version passed the House in the 118th Congress but died in the Senate. This time, sponsors brought it back with the same bipartisan pitch — and got an even cleaner result on the House floor vote today.

The bill sailed through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on December 2, 2025, as part of a markup session that included nearly a dozen other governance bills. No opposition letters were filed against it. Both the National Taxpayers Union and the Data Foundation submitted letters of support.

Yes, but: The bill passed under suspension of the rules — a procedure reserved for non-controversial measures that requires a two-thirds supermajority. That means there was no amendment process and limited debate. Whether the Senate treats this as equally uncontroversial remains an open question, particularly as fights over federal data access tied to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continue to roil Capitol Hill.

Partisan Perspectives on the Information Quality Assurance Act 2025

The HR 6329 floor vote produced a rare alignment. Not a single Republican voted no. Only one Democrat dissented.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the Oversight Committee chairman, framed the bill as a fix for a concrete problem during the committee markup:

"This legislation will improve the quality of agency decision making, improve the acceptability of new rules and guidance, and avoid the need for many disputes over agencies' use of information to go to court."

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), the ranking member, characterized it as a transparency measure with bipartisan bona fides:

"This bill is about improving the quality and transparency of information at our federal agencies and what they use to make the rules."

Lynch also noted: "This bill passed the House overwhelmingly last Congress and we support it again this Congress."

The Trump Administration has not issued a formal Statement of Administration Policy on the bill, according to the White House OMB page. No veto threat has been communicated. The bill's Republican sponsorship and alignment with the administration's regulatory accountability messaging suggest the White House is either supportive or indifferent.

Political Stakes

Winners: Good-government advocates on both sides. Republicans get a tool to challenge regulations built on what they view as flawed agency data. Democrats get a statutory requirement that agencies ground decisions in evidence — a guardrail against political manipulation of government statistics. The House Oversight Committee notches another bipartisan win on its governance reform agenda.

Losers: Agencies that have operated with wide discretion over data quality standards face new accountability. And anyone hoping this bill would address the more contentious fights over DOGE's access to sensitive federal databases will be disappointed — the Information Quality Assurance Act is a process reform, not a direct response to the data-access battles that have dominated headlines.

The 362-1 margin also matters for the Senate calculus. It is difficult for senators to argue a bill is controversial when the House cleared it with near-unanimity. But Senate floor time is a scarce resource, and good-governance bills without a powerful constituency often languish.

The Bottom Line

The Information Quality Assurance Act is a modest but meaningful update to a framework that hasn't kept pace with how the federal government produces and uses information. It passed because both parties have reasons — different reasons — to want stronger data standards. Republicans see it as a check on regulatory overreach. Democrats see it as a shield for evidence-based policymaking. As KPMG research has documented, only 20 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing. This bill is Congress's attempt to address one piece of that problem.

The obstacle is the Senate — and the clock. The previous version cleared the House and went nowhere. Whether this Congress breaks that pattern depends on whether Senate leadership sees data quality reform as worth precious floor time, or whether it gets lost in the noise of larger fights over government efficiency, spending, and agency independence.

One thing is clear: 362 members of Congress just voted to hold the federal government to a higher standard on the information it uses to govern. In this Congress, that kind of consensus is worth paying attention to.

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