Government spending has become something like a fungus – it grows in the dark, and most people fail to notice it until it really starts to reek. Thanks to an ever-increasing federal budget and the esoteric methods used to create and maintain it, the average taxpayer has little chance of gaining any insight into how our government spends our money. Even the people tasked with making the decisions about federal spending seem to have little understanding of both the process and results.

In practice, the federal budget has become the biggest national secret. No one fully comprehends it, and attempting to learn all of its manifestations would take years of research. By that time, of course, it would have grown larger and even more incomprehensible.

What America needs is a viral network of analysts, interacting and competing with each other to shed light on federal spending. Such a network could find expertise in all of the darkest areas of the budget, allowing taxpayers to get better comprehension of all the ways our tax dollars disappear. Even better, these analysts could help us connect the dots between the power brokers, the people who support them, and the connections of federal dollars that bind them together.

The viral network has arrived. The Sunlight Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Club For Growth, and bloggers from across the political spectrum have banded together to start attacking pork-barrel spending and waste in the federal budget. The initial efforts can be found at Sunlight and The Truth Laid Bear for the Exposing Earmarks Project.

The group has begun the project by reviewing earmarks in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill, finding all sorts of information about where your tax dollars go. For instance, did you know there is an earmark of a million dollars on the University of Virginia Center for Politics for the Youth Leadership Initiative? Or that three million will go to City College of New York, for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service? Almost a million dollars is proposed for the Massie Heritage Center in Savannah for exhibit restorations and equipment upgrades.

Does the federal government need to spend money on such pursuits? Some may say yes, while others would disagree. Now, however, at least you can know that the spending exists, and that is a necessary first step to slow the growth of earmarks and pork-barrel politics.