This post should be about all the great Recovery Act transparency and oversight issues the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee learned about yesterday when it held a hearing titled "Follow the Money: An Update on Stimulus Spending, Transparency, and Fraud Prevention." But it isn't.

This week, Recovery Act transparency will begin to take center stage. Today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on stimulus spending and the Council of Economic Advisors released its report on the economic impact of the Recovery Act, while later this month the Government Accountability Office will release its third bimonthly report on Recovery Act implementation and transparency. To highlight strengths and weaknesses of disclosure and accountability in Recovery Act spending, OMB Watch is releasing a comprehensive report on Recovery Act transparency.

Over the next few months, as the October 10 recipient reporting deadline approaches, expect to see many more articles such as this one out of New York City. Apparently, the city is having some problems with estimating how many jobs are being created through teh Recovery Act. With the Office of Management and Budget leaving it up to recipients to estimate/guess how many jobs are being created, such articles are going to be inevitable. The question is whether or not OMB decides to do anything about it, and rework the guidlines for Recovery Act job estimation. A good place to start? Introducing a more effective full-time equivalent standard, or the number of hours that constitute a full-time job. Right now, states can decide on their own what constitutes a full-time job, which makes it difficult to compare projects across state lines. Standardizing the full-time equivalent across the country would be a great first step towards taking the guesswork out of job estimation.

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

Yesterday, Gary wrote about the latest federal budget deficit numbers and noted that, well, there's no need to freak out. Aside from freaking out, understanding how the federal budget got to this level is essential to evaluating budgetary policy options going forward.