Facing Public Pressure, Bush Administration Will Continue Site Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/21/economic-indicators-open/

Facing Public Pressure, Bush Administration Will Continue Site Tracking U.S. Economic Indicators


On Feb. 13, ThinkProgress reported that facing a faltering U.S. economy, the Bush administration was attempting to hide economic data by shutting down the award-winning website EconomicIndicators.gov.

As Forbes explained when it awarded the site one of its “Best of the Web awards, Economic Indicators is a “necessary” portal because it provides easy access to aggregated economic data across government agencies. More significantly, people can sign up to receive e-mails as soon as new data becomes available.

Yet recently, the Bush administration announced the site would be shut down on March 1 because of “budgetary constraints“:


In addition to pressure from the netroots, the Commerce Department heard objections from tech experts and lawmakers. Yesterday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) wrote a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, pressing him to keep Economic Indicators open.

snip//

Originally when the agency announced the site’s closure, it offered users “a free quarterly subscription to STAT-USA®/Internet™” instead. Once this temporary subscription ran out, however, the public would have been forced to pay a fee.

Glad to see that the Bush administration found a few dollars in its record $3.1 trillion FY 09 budget to keep the site running.

UPDATE: Schumer responds to the Department’s announcement:

The administration took the right step in keeping this important economic indicators website and email alerts free and open to the public. This is no time to pull back on the free flow of critical information about our quick-changing economy, and I’m glad the administration agrees that shutting down this website would be penny wise, but pound foolish.