After announcing his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2010, President Barack Obama and his administration are continuing efforts to use the Internet to increase transparency and promote their initiatives with the launch of a redesigned Office of Management and Budget website, complete with a new blog.
There are some big changes in the $3.55 trillion budget, [...]
There are some big changes in the $3.55 trillion budget, which will redirect “enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and [pay] for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies,” according to The New York Times. The administration also estimates a $1.75 trillion deficit, which it plans to shrink $533 trillion by the end of Obama’s first term in 2013. Republicans are already criticizing the plan’s proposed tax increases as job killers, so it’s no surprise that the administration wants to make its case directly to the public, via blogging.
CMB Director Peter Orszag wrote a blog for his previous position in the Congressional Budget Office; in the video below the jump, you can see him describing all the blogs he follows in delightfully nerdy detail (the video starts playing automatically). And here’s how Orszag describes his goals for the new blog:
I know that, for many people, blogs are the easiest way of receiving information — so this blog may prove to be useful even if it simply provides a convenient way of keeping up with information from OMB that is already available in other formats. President Obama is committed to ensuring a direct link between citizens and our federal government. Especially in light of our difficult economic times, I am committed to ensuring that OMB’s work is accessible. Although OMB is extensively discussed in the media and elsewhere, the blog will allow me to communicate and explain our work directly.
Orszag’s blog joins the White House blog that was unveiled on inauguration day, and the site that I find most promising, Recovery.gov, which will supposedly show where Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package gets spent.
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