US Gov’t Launches Another Money-Tracking Site

Are you a big fan of Recovery.gov? No? Too bad. The Obama administration is launching another Web site with the goal of transparency, this time for tracking all government spending. USAspending.gov starts by painting the broad strokes, with a big pie chart of how much government money is going towards contracts (a lot), grants (also a lot), loans, insurance, direct payments and other assistance. Digging deeper into the site, visitors can look at each of those categories by state or see who’s getting the most money. For example, you’re just a few clicks away from seeing that Lockheed Martin got roughly $20 billion for 2009, or 9.2 percent of all contract money. Dig further and you can see where that money went ($915 million on “Space Vehicles”). Keep all this in mind next time you want to know which congressman is bringing home the most bacon. [via InformationWeek]