Is the Government Spending Too Much Money to Help You Track Your Cash?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Extreme Makeover

Five months after the Web site Recovery.gov was launched by the administration as a way to track stimulus spending, it is getting a makeover that doesn't come cheap.

The General Services Administration announced that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the site. In a press release, James A. Williams from the General Services Administration says: "Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent."

But Information Week magazine reports the company awarded the contract, Smartronix, does not list Web development expertise on its Web site profile.

Federal records show Smartronix executives have contributed $19,000 in the past 10 years to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

Animal House

During the stimulus debate on Capitol Hill, Republicans used a very small animal to illustrate a very large point. They mocked a plan to save the endangered salt water harvest mouse, whose San Francisco Bay Area habitat borders the congressional district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans were silenced when the mouse was not listed in the final bill that passed. But now it appears a little over $16 million of the stimulus funds will go to restoring two Bay Area salt ponds. That prompted House Minority Leader John Boehner to lament to the Washington Post that the stimulus isn't creating jobs, but instead, "is making sure American harvest mice have nice comfortable homes in the midst of the recession."

Pelosi's spokesman, Drew Hammill, quickly responded to the Washington Post, calling the attacks on the mouse: "a tired and tried tale of Republican desperation."

Beat It

And finally, Texas Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee was given less than the white-glove treatment by Speaker Pelosi for a proposed resolution honoring Michael Jackson as a global humanitarian.

Pelosi was asked today if she would go along. She said the subject matter was pop culture, and that she does not feel it is necessary to have a resolution that might cause a debate over contrary views about Jackson.

— FOX News Channel's Lanna Britt contributed to this report.