Your Invitation to the White House Awaits

Today, President Bush signed into law the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which will create a publicly available, Google-like Web site listing the myriad government grants and contracts. As a thank-you to the blogosphere, which indispensably helped shepherd the bill through the secretive labyrinth that is the senate, the president invited several bloggers to the White House this morning.

If you weren’t there, don’t feel bad—your next opportunity is already here.

In conjunction with several nonprofits, the Washington Examiner has created a Web site listing all the earmarks in the 2006 Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill. The goal: to spur a public backlash by snuffing out the sponsors of these pork pets.

A recent news article by Gail Russell Chaddock contextualized the importance of this bill: “When Republicans took over the House in 1995, there were five earmarks in the Labor, Health and Human Services bill, amounting to $2.4 million. By FY 2005, the number of earmarks attached to this bill had soared to 3,014 or $1.18 billion.”

Let’s make sure that number shrinks—dramatically—for the 2006 bill. With your help (click here for your state’s earmarks), we can reinvigorate the lost pillars of fiscal responsibility and limited government. One step at a time.