Although I can hardly deal with my own spending, I decided to visit a federal government website on federal spending recommended by another NPL librarian. At FedSpending.org you can find out how the federal government spends your money. This website was created by OMB Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog organization whose mission, as stated on their home page, is "to promote open government, accountability and citizen participation". According to OMB Watch, the data is largely from two sources:
- the Federal Procurement Data System provides information about federal contracts;
- the Federal Assistance Award Data System provides information about federal financial assistance such as grants, loans, insurance and such direct subsidies as Social Security.

FedSpending.org allows you to take the information it provides and select and organize it to your own specifications such as recipient, congressional district and state At first glance the site appears enormously complex, but you can begin by reading such provided documentation along the left sidebar as Tutorials, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Abouts... and the Site Map.

But if you are like me, I preferred to delve right in and select the Contracts database (center tab at the top of the sidebar). I then proceeded to enter the infamous "Halliburton" in the Search text box and found a good deal of information about our government's 2005 contracts with Halliburton:

Full and open competition $5,601,262,543
Full and open competition, but only one bid $275,745,935
Competition after exclusion of sources $13,685,008
Follow-on contract $437,000
Not available for competition $23,403
Not competed $16,160,344
Unknown $0

And, as you can see, you may request various levels of detail, bring up another year or change your output format in the drop-down list boxes on the top right of the page.

I then selected Top 100 Contractors (2006) and I found Halliburton to be #6 on the list with a whopping over $4 billion of contracts. The Lockheed Martin Corporation is #1 on the list with almost $20 billion of contracts.

As you browse around this site, you will notice you can research grants as well as contracts. You can also retrieve your information by state, congressional district or major agency. Try finding the company BAE's contract information. If you go to the detail level (or use this link), you will see that of the more than $5 billion BAE Systems won in government contracts in 2005, $532 million of the work was performed in New Hampshire's Congressional District #2 (us)!

We have several resources here at the library if you are interested in procuring a grant or contract from the federal government:

Proposals that win federal contracts : how to plan, price, write, and negotiate to get your fair share of government business by Barry L. McVay.

Win government contracts for your small business by John DiGiacomo, James Kleckner.

Catalog of federal domestic assistance or online.

Getting started in federal contracting : a guide through the federal procurement maze by Barry L. McVay.

Federal acquisition regulation [electronic resource].

For other online resources look no more than at the University of Michigan's terrific website
University of Michigan Documents Center Federal Government Resources.

As you can see, there is a good deal of money out there!