If you want to learn more about government spending, check out USASpending.gov. It’s a website that was finished recently by the Office of Management and Budget to make it easier for people (inside and outside of the government, I’d imagine) to see where money is spent.
That’s pretty cool by itself, but what’s more impressive to me is who built the site. OMB Watch, which I hadn’t heard of before now, is a watchdog organization that has been quite critical of the OMB, but was hired to build the site. The Washington Post has an article about it. OMB Watch had built a version of this site on their own, but USASpending.gov looks like it’s more comprehensive, and of course it’s an official source with better access to all the relevant data.
Sometimes adversaries make the best partners.