So Where is the "Stimulus" Money Going?

Thursday, April 2, 2009 3:11 PM

Amanda Carpenter has a great piece in today's Washington Times that shares our concerns regarding www.recovery.gov, the website set up by the Obama administration to track the money spent under the trillion dollar spending and debt package passed under the guise of "economic stimulus:"

Obama said the website would provide a way for taxpayers to track and monitor how the $700 billion in stimulus money was being spent, yet more than two months after some of the funds have been released the website offers little detail on where the money is going.  

Rather, the site mainly provides links to other government agencies and features press releases. A stimulus timeline reveals government agencies will not be required to provide financial reports until May 15.  The site doesn't provide any kind of search function to scour the website for information either.

Carpenter quotes Sen. Tom Coburn, who as of now is not very impressed:

Instead of being a one-stop shop for stimulus information, Recovery.gov does little more than redirect its visitors to other agency websites," stated Coburn in a statement prepared for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Without a major revamp of the website, I am afraid that taxpayers will be confused and wasteful spending will occur in secret.
 
(...)
 
For that kind of money the administration should produce a top notch website.  Unfortunately, the product we have seen so far leaves much to be desired.

The fact that Earl Devaney, Chariman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, was attempting to tone down expectations in today's testimony before the senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, doesn't instill much faith that the level of transparency taxpayers expect and have been promised will actually be provided. 

Add to that the fact that folks now come to realize that it is next to impossible to calculate "jobs saved/created" and the realization that "some level of waste or fraud is, regrettably, inevitable" and it becomes all the more apparent that it was not a wise decision to ram through this package in the middle of the night ...

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