Free Republic

The White House budget office launched USASpending.gov in 2007 to track federal spending after scores of lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, successfully pushed through a bipartisan bill to ensure greater transparency with the funding. At last check, less than 8 percent of the site’s spending information was accurate, and federal agencies had failed to report nearly $620 billion in grants, loans and other forms of assistance awards, according to a recent report from Congress’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

Launched in December 2007, USASpending.gov was meant as a way of tapping modern technology to hand the American public the means to track what the federal government spends. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that, in 2012 at least, more than $619 billion in federal awards that should be accounted for on the site weren't. Agencies, GAO found, are generally reporting on the contracts that they hand out. What's missing from the site are grants and awards, a range of federal spending that covers everything from agricultural development to research on new naval reconnaissance. The absent...