As a candidate for President, Barack Obama pledged to eliminate government waste and spend the taxpayer’s dollars wisely. He also promised to shine a never before seen light of transparency on the federal government. As part of this initiative, Obama’s administration launched Recovery.gov a website they promised would allow Americans to see how their money from the stimulus bill was being spent.

Amanda Carpenter has a fantastic piece in today’s Washington Times, detailing the shortcomings of the government site.

Concerns are piling up that www.recovery.gov, the Obama Administration’s online clearinghouse for stimulus spending information, isn’t producing the kind of transparency it promised.

Obama said the website would provide a way for taxpayers to track and monitor how the $700 billion in stimulus money was being spent, yet more than two months after some of the funds have been released the website offers little detail on where the money is going.

As Amanda highlights, although Recovery.gov looks nice, the site is short on specifics and serves as little more than a repository of Obama administration press releases and links to other government run websites. Here’s the real kicker though, this website cost you, me and the rest of America’s taxpayers a whopping $84 million dollars.

Let me say that one more time. The man who promised on the campaign trail to be a wise steward of your taxpayer dollars and root out government waste has spent $84 million dollars of your money on a website.

My day job, when not writing for The New Ledger, is as an online consultant for campaigns, companies, organizations and individuals. I build websites for a living. I cannot fathom even the most amazingly interactive, cliché loaded site actually costing anywhere near $84 million dollars. It doesn’t matter how much “testing” or “compliance” you need to do, it does not cost you $84 million to build that site.

How much is $84 million? In the scheme of the trillions of dollars Obama has proposed to spend in his administration, it’s not much, but think about it in other contexts. The outrage and scandal that developed in recent weeks over AIG’s bonuses paid revolved around $165 million worth of bonuses to be paid. The public was whipped into a palpable lather over that money. Nearly ever member of Congress rained upon the cable news outlets to cry havoc over the absurdity of that money. It’s even led to legislation.

What else does $84 million get you these days? Let’s see. Obama’s own Department of Energy announced just about a month ago that it would invest $84 million in geothermal energy. From the press release…

“President Obama has laid out an ambitious agenda to put millions of people to work by investing in clean energy technology like geothermal energy,” said Secretary Chu. “The Administration is committed to funding important research like this to transform the way we use and produce energy and reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.”

So in that case $84 million “put millions of people to work” and reduced “our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.” That seems like a better deal to me.

Ironically enough, $84 million is also the amount of public funding that Barack Obama turned down to run the general election portion of his campaign.

$84 million, or what the government has available to hand out to both the Republican and Democratic nominees for president, is more money than most people will ever see in their lifetimes, making some wonder why it’s not enough for Barack Obama to run his campaign.

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Had Obama accepted public funding, his campaign would be limited to spending about $1.2 million per day from the end of the Democratic convention until Election Day.

That’s $1.2 million per day for about 67 days. Building Recovery.gov didn’t take that long. Think about that. Whoever got that $84 million, got paid more than $1.2 million PER DAY to build a subpar, underwhelming website.

“For that kind of money the administration should produce a top notch website. Unfortunately, the product we have seen so far leaves much to be desired,” Dr. Coburn said.

It’s time to ask Obama if he’s going to shine a light of transparency on the process that his administration went through to produce Recovery.gov. Who built it and how does the administration justify spending that kind of money on a website that doesn’t even begin to deliver on what it promised?

Mr. President, it’s time for some answers.