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Editorial: Online Budget

The Columbian (Clark County, Washington)

September 19, 2006

Putting federal government's expenditures on the Internet is a great idea.

If your spending habits were posted on the Internet for anyone and everyone to see, would it change your buying behavior?

Don't worry. No one is suggesting that your grocery bills or your retail store indulgences go online. But it's a brilliant idea for the federal government's purchases to be listed in a format that allows nonexperts to figure out where tax dollars go.

Following the money will be easy with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, spearheaded by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. With bipartisan support from cosponsoring Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Tom Carper, D-Del., and John McCain, R-Ariz., Coburn's bill became an irresistible piece of legislation that only lobbyists dare diss. The bill passed in the Senate earlier this month by unanimous consent and was passed Wednesday by the House. If it is signed by President Bush as expected, a mountain of information about federal spending would be available to the masses via a single source.

The measure will require the government to post the name of any corporation, association, contractor, grantee, state or locality that receives federal funds. The information provided would have to include the amount and purpose of each transaction, along with an itemized breakdown of the funding. All grants, loans, awards, interest payments and contracts would be listed. And users would simply type in key words to find an entity to see how much money it got.

You could type in "Boeing," for example, to see how many bones the feds are throwing one of Washington state's top dogs for its goods and services.

Experts say the task of putting together such an all-inclusive, expenditure-tracking database is doable. Large banks do something similar by monitoring the individual credit card and debit transactions of their customers. Alan E. Webber, a senior analyst for Forrester Research Inc., told The Washington Post, "It would be a huge undertaking, but it would be feasible."

The undertaking is worth the Office of Management and Budget's time and resources. Mistrust of government isn't going away. A report by the Congressional Research Service shows that spending earmarks in appropriation bills alone rose from 4,155 in 1994 to 15,887 in 2005.

If the government is spending our money wisely, the database will reflect that and can actually help improve the public's perception of Congress' spending choices. At the same time, knowing that all contract awards, grants and loans will be available for the public to scrutinize could rein in a lot of pork-barrel oink fests. As Coburn told The New York Times, "Sunshine's the best thing we've got to control waste, fraud and abuse. It's also the best thing ? to control stupidity."

The White House is rightly behind the idea. Budget director Rob Portman told reporters, "American taxpayers benefit from having the necessary information to hold government accountable for results" and promised a "user-friendly Web site so that the public can scrutinize how government is spending taxpayer dollars."

American tax payers deserve an unobstructed view of their investments, and lawmakers would benefit from more accountability.