April 17, 2009 11:09AM 

# Private Zips Past Public 

By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) 

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[Gov​ex​ec​.com reports](http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=42504&dcn=e_gvet): “Private sector zips past government in Recovery Act tracking.”

If you want to find out where governments are spending the $800 billion in federal stimulus money, the story reports that you would do better to go to [www​.recov​ery​.org](http://www.recovery.org) than [www​.recov​ery​.gov](http://www.recovery.gov). The latter is the government website that stimulus-overseer, VP Joe Biden, could not remember the name of. The former is a project of the business research firm Onvia.

The private [www​.recov​ery​.org](http://www.recovery.org) does have useful data and charts. But Onvia should have paired the chart “Estimated Jobs Created by State” with another one titled “Estimated Jobs Destroyed by State” to illustrate the financing burden of all the new spending.

##### Related Tags 

[Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) 

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