MarketingPilgrim has a post that says the  US Senete wants to build a search engine modeled after Google to search Federal Spending outlays according to AP.

"A far-flung coalition of groups across the political spectrum supports the idea and their efforts were rewarded Thursday as the Senate passed a bill to build a Google-like search engine to allow people to track online approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans.

"The bill, sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., passed after Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, dropped his objections. Senate leaders had tried to pass the bill in early August but Stevens and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., blocked passage by lodging secret "holds" on the bill."

"…For example, one could type in "Boeing" to find contracts awarded to the aerospace company or "breast cancer research" to see efforts to battle one of the leading killers of women."

No wonder Ted Stevens was trying to block the bill - the party in power probably does not want you to know how federal money is being spent.

Like MarketingPilgrim, I’d suggest having Google just create a specialized crawl - I think they’re already doing some of this.