Tracking the Stimulus

“This is your money. You have a right to know where it's going and how it's being spent,” declares the Obama administration’s new website, Recovery.gov. To that end, incoming Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag sent a memo yesterday to all departments and agencies charged with awarding funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Among the “crucial accountability objectives” laid out by Orszag are: data proving that funds are “distributed in a prompt, fair and reasonable manner” and “instances of fraud, waste, error and abuse are mitigated.” A blog post on WhiteHouse.gov emphasizes the weight of the task before the OMB director, saying: “It's going to require an unprecedented level of vigilance, a fundamental shift in the way the federal government spends your tax dollars.”