Mark Tapscott
Obama’s transparency is clear as mud
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
April 29, 2009
Other than the blinding speed with which he abandoned the moderate image so crucial to his winning the White House, President Obama has done little since Jan. 20 to surprise anybody who listened closely to what he said on the 2008 campaign trail.
But Obama’s actions in one area are surprising and disappointing. He promised the most transparent government ever, yet in a mere 100 days, he’s made it extraordinarily difficult to find basic information about economic recovery spending.
How can this be, considering the landmark Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 was more commonly known as “Coburn-Obama,” after Obama and Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican senator.
Coburn-Obama mandated creation of the first Google-like, searchable Internet database of federal spending, now online at USASpending.gov. Regular readers here know how rhapsodic I get about this law’s capacity to assure the public’s business in Washington is actually done in public.
Sadly, Obama is slamming doors shut right and left. Lest you think that assertion is mere right-wing spin, consider the recent conclusion of the Sunlight Foundation concerning the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Toxic Assets Recovery Program (TARP).
Three and a half months into the Obama era and Sunlight’s Real-Time Investigations team recently found that “some of the most elementary details about the [TARP] program - like who is actually managing distribution of the bailout money to financial institutions - is still shrouded in secrecy.”
Then there is that pork-stuffed $787 billion economic stimulus package rammed into law by Obama and his buddies on the Hill, led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. This monument to politicians’ insatiable thirst to waste tax dollars ought to be called Porkulus Maximus.
Good luck trying to find out where those billions are going. Obama promised the public would have unprecedented access to stimulus spending information, saying “our goal must be to spend these precious dollars with unprecedented accountability, responsibility, and transparency.”
Obama is uncommonly good at saying the right words. The new government web site, recovery.gov., is unprecedented alright, but not the way Obama promised.
There has been some improvement in recent weeks, but recovery.gov remains chock full of colorful charts, links to official PR babble, and mildly interesting summary statistics. Mostly, the site is a tax-paid propaganda tool to persuade the gullible that Obama is doing a wonderful job.
The recent upgrades in the government’s site likely came in response to pressure from the private sector. If you really want to get a handle on what is being done with your tax dollars via Porkulus Maximus, check out recovery.org., a free web site maintained by Onvia, a Seattle-based private company that specializes in getting information about government spending.
Unlike Obama’s government site, Onvia’s is remarkably timely, comprehensive and free of self-serving propaganda. Recovery.org makes it easy to find specific stimulus projects in your state, city or county, and the site is rich with facts, figures, sources, links and useful analyses.
If Obama was serious about making federal stimulus spending genuinely transparent, he would order the General Services Administration to toss recovery.gov into the cyber waste basket and replace it with a link to Onvia’s for recovery.org.
One more thing while we are on the subject of Obama and transparency. Remember his campaign promise to not sign any major bill for five days after it reaches his desk, in order to allow the rest of us sufficient time to read the full text online?
Hasn’t happened. He delayed signing Porkulus Maximus for a weekend, but that was to make room for a shopping spree with Michelle and the girls back home in Chicago.
Whatever else is said of Obama’s first 100 days, this much has become crystal clear – his campaign promises are as worthless as those of any other politician who thinks Lincoln was wrong about how many of us can be fooled for how long.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
