WashingtonWatch.com is sponsoring a contest to call out the the best and the worst of the stimulus bill that is making its way through Congress.

Your goal is to identify spending in the economic stimulus bill that will do a really good job of stimulating the economy, or a really bad job. A $100 prize will go to the best comment identifying good stimulus spending - the spending that will do the most to get the economy on its feet - and another $100 to the best comment identifying bad stimulus spending - spending that will just fall in a hole or even make the U.S. economy worse.

Take any part of the stimulus bill and write a short case for why it's good or bad. (Recommended: search the bill for "$" - there are more than 350 of them.) Pick anything - from an entire government department to the smallest program. You can even pick a non-spending provision in the bill that you think will do good or bad.

The Budget Brigade's own Adam Hughes will be one of the judges, so start sending those checks entries in to me WashingtonWatch.com!

Image by Flickr user littleli1985 used under a Creative Commons license.

chutz·pa
—noun Slang.
1. unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall.
2. audacity; nerve.

"Report Finds Major U.S. Companies Have Offshore Tax Havens":

A majority of America's largest publicly traded companies and the U.S. government's largest federal contractors -- including some receiving millions in federal bailout money -- use multiple subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to conduct business and avoid paying U.S. taxes, a new report finds.

The new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released today by Sens. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), lists Citigroup and Morgan Stanley as having set up hundreds of tax haven subsidiaries, along with American International Group and Bank of America. Also in the tax-haven list are well-known companies and such federal contractors as American Express, Pepsi and Caterpillar.

GAO, searching publicly available data filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, determined that 83 of the 100 largest publicly traded corporations and 63 of the 100 largest federal contractors maintain subsidiaries in countries generally considered havens for avoiding taxes. Dorgan and Levin said they requested the updated report from one several years ago because they are focused on combating offshore tax abuses, which they estimated cause $100 billion in lost U.S. tax revenue each year.

So, the federal government loans or gives away gobs of money to corporations with which they employ to turn a profit and then promptly avoid paying taxes by hoarding their gains offshore. Absolutely shameless.

Image by Flickr user EricGjerde used under a Creative Commons license.

In his confirmation hearing in front the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week, then-OMB Director nominee Peter Orszag (confirmed on Tuesday) made some encouraging remarks about curtailing the use of contractors to perform governmental work.

CQ Politics:

By 42-52, the Senate rejected a resolution of disapproval (S J Res 5) designed to block release of the second half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.