Recent media reports have shown a few of the many ways to use FedSpending.org, our new online database that lets you track how the federal government spends money.

Some articles have used FedSpending to show the local impact of federal spending. An article in the Washington Examiner used FedSpending.org to calculate the total amount of all contracts that are handled by companies in the Washington, DC area. And a report in the Salt Lake City Tribune covered total federal dollars that Utah received.

Federal Times used data from FedSpending.org to showcase the rapid increase in government contracting since 2000.

And Government Executive Magazine included results from FedSpending to help connect the dots in a government corruption case.

Let us know what ways you use FedSpending.org or see it used in your local area, and we'll put them on the blog (you can email me at mlewis at ombwatch.org).

Here's more evidence of the budgetary sleight-of-hand, misguided priorities, and broken promises that we've all come to expect from the Bush Administration.

This time, it's from former Bush staffer David Kuo, whose new book has gotten signficant press attention.

Introducing the book, he writes on BeliefNet of the grand promises Bush made as a presidential candidate in 2000.

That day a conservative Texas governor promised more than $8 billion during his first year in office to help social service organizations better serve "the least, the last, and the lost." More than $6 billion was to go for new tax incentives that would generate billions more in private charitable giving. Another $1.7 billion a year would fund faith-based (and non-faith-based) groups caring for drug addicts, at-risk youth, and teen moms. $200 million more would establish a "Compassion Capital Fund" to assist, expand and replicate successful local programs. Legislation would ensure that reported government discrimination against faith-based social service organizations would end. A new White House Faith-Based Office would lead the charge.

Faith-based charities would see barely any of that money. And some of the money that actually was allocated to faith-based groups may be diverted later on.

Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced "new" programs aren't what they appear. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recently-announced "gang prevention initiative" totaling $50 million a year for three years. The obvious inference is that the money is new spending on an important initiative. Not quite. The money is being taken out of the already meager $100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund. If granted, it would actually mean a $5 million reduction in the Fund from last year.

This isn't what was promised.

When it comes to poverty, President Bush has never put his money where his mouth is. Kuo gets it- will the rest of the conservative evangelical community get it, too? Do they really care?

In a brilliant analysis of the FY 2007 DoD appropriations bill, Winslow T. Wheeler, Director at the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information based in Washington, D.C., exposes the bill's budget gimmicks, misleading program labeling, and meaningless dollar figures.

The lead-in for Wheeler's article:

Congress has so complex-ified the defense budget and stuffed it with spending gimmicks, it is difficult to understand just how much is being spent on national defense and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has become such a jumble that some journalists seem to rely upon press releases from the Senate and House Appropriations Committees and the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to report on the budget. Doing so is a serious mistake; the committees' numbers are highly misleading, and sometimes have absolutely nothing to do with what is actually spent on defense.

The launch of OMB Watch's powerful new Web-based tool for tracking government spending and congressional accountability will be held at 9:30 a.m.next Wednesday Oct. 10, in the Lisagor Room of the National Press Club.

Update:
The press conference in Washington on Tuesday, October 10 will also be webcast - so you can join in on the excitment from anywhere. Sign up for a reminder from OMB Watch by email on Tuesday morning about the event.