President Barack Obama tells the nation's mayors:
... The American people are watching. They need this plan to work. They expect to see the money that they've earned, that they've worked so hard to earn, spent in its intended purposes without waste, without inefficiency, without fraud.
And that's why I'm assigning a team of managers to ensure that every dollar is spent wisely. And that's why we've created recovery.gov -- so that every American can go online to see how their money is spent, and hold their federal, state, and local officials to the highest standards they expect.
So I want to be clear about this: We cannot tolerate business as usual -- not in Washington, not in our state capitols, not in America's cities and towns. We will use the new tools that the recovery act gives us to watch the taxpayers' money with more rigor and transparency than ever. If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it and put a stop to it.
And I want everybody here to be on notice that if a local government does the same, I will call them out on it and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it. We have asked for the unprecedented trust of the American people to deal boldly with the greatest economic crisis we've seen in decades and the privilege of investing unprecedented amounts of their hard-earned money to address this crisis. And with that comes unprecedented obligations to spend that money wisely -- free from politics and free from personal agendas.
On this, I will not compromise or tolerate any shortcuts. The American people are looking to us, each of you, as well as myself and Joe and others in our administration, for leadership, and it's up to us to reward their faith.