Show Me the (Stimulus) Money!

At long last, the federal government has its new stimulus-tracking website up and running. Interested taxpayers and journalists can now start digging to find out where some of the billions of dollars that have been printed up in Washington under Obama’s stimulus plan are going. The website is recovery.gov and can be found here. Particularly interesting to me was the area of the site that tracked spending of stimulus money in New Mexico.

You are encouraged to go in and look at specific grants, loans, and contracts in your area. A few that I noticed in Albuquerque included a $480,000 loan to O’Neill’s Pub on Central. A Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop got another $800,000 loan.

As I told Santa Fe New Mexican reporter Kate Nash, the website, while useful, raises more questions than answers. Hopefully average citizens will take a closer look at some of the businesses receiving this money and find out for themselves whether the federal government should really be involved in all of this.