The New York Times leads today with a fascinating article about the Interior Department dropping a claim that oil-giant Chevron is underpaying royalties.

The Small Business Administration launched a website last week to help businesses make their way through the regulatory maze. Business.gov is the first government website to bring all federal regulatory information under one roof. Over 20,000 compliance-related documents from 94 agencies are available at business.gov, and the website is fully searchable by industry or topic. Unlike industry efforts to weaken or eliminate regulations, compliance assistance can save businesses money while maintaining needed protections.

The National Journal's Stan Collender ($$) is feeling pessimistic about next year's budget. Key graf: If Republicans are in the majority, fiscal and social conservatives will have to work with moderates who will fear a lame-duck president and a weakened leadership even less than they did this year. That will make it very hard to get majority support for any of the key budget, tax and spending issues.

Recent media reports have shown a few of the many ways to use FedSpending.org, our new online database that lets you track how the federal government spends money. Some articles have used FedSpending to show the local impact of federal spending. An article in the Washington Examiner used FedSpending.org to calculate the total amount of all contracts that are handled by companies in the Washington, DC area. And a report in the Salt Lake City Tribune covered total federal dollars that Utah received.