Pew to track role of federal subsidies in U.S. economy

Now comes an idea whose time came about, well, maybe about a Century ago, give or take a few decades.

However, The Pew Charitable Trusts announced Saturday (Dec. 20) the launch of “Subsidyscope.” According to the the newly launched web site, “Subsidyscope aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy. This new project, launched by The Pew Charitable Trusts, plans to create a searchable database of federal subsidies and publish the data online. Over the next few years, the project will build this subsidy database industry sector by industry sector.”

Continuing, the folks at Pew explain why they decided to launch such a beast of a project: “In the past several months, the federal government has intervened in the nation’s economy in unprecedented ways. Those actions have raised many citizens’ awareness of the role of subsidies in the economy and heightened concerns about their size, not only in the financial sector, but in other sectors as well. Yet, despite growing public concerns, comprehensive and high-quality information about the true scale of government subsidies is still lacking. Moreover, in light of the scarcity of resources in today’s fiscally challenged environment, such a database could help policymakers and the public make more informed decisions about public policy.”

What will Pew do with the info it gathers?

“Pew staff will be carefully sifting through the data, looking for patterns and discerning trends. Based on that analysis, we will publish a regular series of major reports on sector subsidies, written by budget analysts on Pew’s staff and peer reviewed by outside experts. Our approach to the data analysis is unbiased, objective and nonpartisan.”

While one might think the job of keeping track of money lies at the feet of Congress, kudos to the respected Pew Charitable Trust for engaging this effort.