| Tuesday, June 20, 2006 |
| A license to steal |
Every voting Republican Senator, with the exception of Lincoln Chaffee, votes to reject the creation of a special committee to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in contracting for Iraq and Afghanistan. Raw Story has the hall of shame roll call vote.
BTW, contracting has become the biggest money pit in the federal government under the Bush administration, as Congressman Henry Waxman has ferreted out. According to Randi Rhodes, Waxman plans to publish all of the government's bloated, wasteful federal contracts on a website, including the findings of GAO and other watchdogs regarding the misspending of federal tax dollars, and the fact that Halliburton, for instance, has gorged itself on a 600 percent increase in contract lard since Dubya took office. So greasy is the pork runnoff from Bush's dual wars, but especially Iraq, federal contracting is now the single fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending. Also from Raw:
ASHINGTON -- A new report claims that a "shadow government" of federal contractors has exploded in size over the last five years.
The document, compiled at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and distributed to RAW STORY, indicates that procurement spending increased by over $175 billion between 2000 and 2005, making federal contracts the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending.
500 reports, audits and investigations by government and independent bodies, including the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, were used to compile the data.
That spending increase -- an astonishing 86 percent -- puts total US federal procurement at $377.5 billion annually. The increase means spending on federal contracts has grown more than two times as fast as other forms of discretionary government spending.
Nearly $800b in contracts questioned
Waxman claims that overcharging -- by mistake or outright fraud -- has been a frequent occurrance. In all, the report identifies 118 federal contracts worth $745.5 billion that have been found by government officials to include significant waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement.
Each of the Bush Administration's three signature initiatives -- Homeland Security, the Iraq war and reconstruction in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina recovery -- has been linked to wasteful contract spending.
Spending is categorized in the report as highly concentrated on a few large contractors, with the five largest contractors receiving over 20 percent of contract dollars awarded in 2005. Last year, the largest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin, received contracts worth more than the total combined budgets of the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Congress. So righties? Looking for government agencies to abolish? Start with the government agency called Halliburton.
Tags: Halliburton, Corruption, Politics, Republicans |
posted by JReid @ 8:58 PM   |
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