It took Google $1.1 million to start the most powerful search engine in the world.  It’s taken $84 million to start Recovery.gov and it still can’t tell you where the Stimulus funds are going. 

The dot com bubble burst like a water balloon tossed from the Sears Tower in the late 1990’s – except apparently in Washington.  Despite President Barack Obama’s high hopes of internet transparency over the $700 million in Stimulus money, the administration’s web resource of Recovery.gov has made the destination of funds as clear as a cement block:

[T]he site mainly provides links to other government agencies and features press releases. A stimulus time line 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 Web site for information either…

“Instead of being a one-stop shop for stimulus information, Recovery.gov does little more than redirect its visitors to other agency websites,” stated [Senator Tom] Coburn in a statement prepared for the 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.”
 
Coburn noted Recovery Accountabilty and Transparency Chief Earl Devaney had told the Wall Street Journal most of his budget, approximately $84 million, was being spent to develop the Web site. 

Inflation aside, for 84 times the investment that Google received to start their company, Minnesotans interested in knowing where their children’s grandchildren’s taxes are going can find out Tom Vilsack’s press release on rural America and share their own “recovery story” but little else when searching their own state on the site.  But it sure does look pretty and the home page tells you you’re getting a tax credit equivalent to $7.6 a week back in tax credits under the “Making Work Pay” program.  I guess lunch once a week at McDonald’s is on the President.

Somewhere a website developer is laughing his ass off.