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Obama creates new Internet sensation: www.recovery.gov gets 3,000 hits per second

The website created by the Obama administration to help taxpayers follow the money -- www.recovery.gov -- is becoming a new Internet sensation.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, in the first meeting of the overview committee headed by Vice President Joe Biden to monitor how the $787 billion is being spent, said today that the new site is getting 3,000 hits per second.

Biden -- flanked in the photo above by Orszag on the left and Earl Devaney, the tough cop running the Accountability Board, on the right -- called the effort to track stimulus money "unprecedented." Promising to use "the moral approbation of this office," Biden said that he will do everything he can to make sure that unlike last time, federal funds meant to stimulate the economy are actually used to create jobs and rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

"As we go along," Biden told the team, "I'm going to be a bit of a pain in the neck."

Devaney, a former cop and Secret Service agent turned inspector general who exposed a sex-and-drugs scandal in the Interior Department during the Bush administration, also touted transparency.

OMB has gotten that up and running, and I think I'll be at some point taking that over and trying to build that into what it's intended to be. It's an historic web site that will allow transparency that we've never seen before. And the goal -- my goal will be for the average citizen to be able to go on that web site and follow the money. And in large part I think I'll be hearing a lot from citizens, as you mentioned, if they see things that they don't like, and hopefully we'll get some attention to misuse of any of this money.

And if the money is not getting to the people it was intended for, Biden said, he will "go out on television" and point fingers.

A full transcript of the Biden meeting is below. And here's a peek at www.recovery.gov.

VIDEO:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/02/recoverygov.html