Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., wants to use the power of the Internet to help pull back the curtains on wasteful government spending.

The chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management has introduced bipartisan legislation that would create a database of most government contracts and grants.

Concerned citizens and watchdog groups would then be able to use Internet search engines to query the database.

Interested in knowing how many different contracts Halliburton holds and what their value is? A Google search would tell you.

A Yahoo query would reveal information about grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The essential element of the project is to make otherwise obscure information about government spending easily accessible to the public. With thousands or possibly millions of citizens scrutinizing how their tax dollars are being spent, the potential for fiscal mischief declines.

"Sunshine's the best thing we've got to control waste, fraud and abuse," Coburn told the New York Times. "It's also the best thing we've got to control stupidity."

The House passed a similar sunshine bill last month. It, however, would only put grant information in the database.

Coburn's measure, which includes contracts, is more comprehensive.

Such a common sense approach to the problem of secretive government spending deserves broad support.