Citizens Can Now Track the Government’s Spending

The Office of Management and Budget and its arch-enemy OBM Watch, one of the budget office's harshest nonprofit critics, have demonstrated that bipartisanship works. Under legal mandate from a law sponsored by conservative Senator Tom Coburn and his counterpart on the left Senator Barrack Obama, OMB has adopted much of OBM Watch’s software and experience to create a searchable online database, three weeks ahead of the law’s deadline. USASpending.gov could be the most useful protection of democratic freedoms created in years.

Ever wonder how much government money Halliburton gets and under what terms? Just type in the search window of the website “Halliburton,” hit enter and stand back. The answer for 2006 comes up in microseconds. “Full and open competition $0. Full and open competition but only one bid $52,569” (this is millions but the site figures everyone understands the unit is the megabuck). Want more detail, select “complete” on “level of detail.”

Want to know how much goes into Congressman Joel Hefley’s Fifth Colorado Congressional District? Search for it under “by place of performance.” His district gets” $493,301,522 The amount for this search is 0.1% of all awarded dollars for the fiscal year. This Congressional District is ranked 60 among districts for this year [2006]. Total number of contractors: 979. Total number of transactions: 3,747” That’s just the “summary” level of detail.

As for agencies and departments, that’s there, too. For example, NASA gave Lockheed Martin a definitive contract worth $563,000,000 on a Cost Plus Award Fee, to “DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT, TEST & EVALUATION OF PROJECT ORION [caps on website].” Project Orion is NASA’s new spacecraft for human exploration of space (that is, “a waste” since robots do it better).

This is an astonishing project finished ahead of schedule, easy to use, and updated every two weeks rather than monthly as mandated by law. Even better, OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org remains on-line as a check against USAspending.gov. Justice Louis D. Brandeis was right, "Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” OMB and OMB Watch just took the curtains down. Well done.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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