Following Our Money

I can just hear you know; “God, Doomsy, you’re just so full of boring, policy-wonk stuff on this blog that nobody cares about” (well, a few people anyway I hope).

Yep, I sure am. And here’s some more.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran the following editorial:

The new Congress is promising far tighter oversight of Bush administration spending programs, and few targets are more in need of scrutiny and daylight than the outsourcing of government programs to private contractors. This highly lucrative world quietly ballooned by 86 percent – to $377 billion annually – during the first five years of the Bush administration, according to Congressional estimates. Outsourced spending, on Iraq, Katrina and other bonanzas, has grown twice as fast as other discretionary spending, according to Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the oversight and reform committee.

Mr. Waxman is fairly itching to finally map the waste, fraud and abuse in private contracting that went largely ignored by the previous Republican Congress. Taxpayers should wish him well.

In a preliminary glimpse, 118 contracts worth $745 billion were found by government auditors to be rife with questionable award procedures, mismanagement, overcharging and skimpy to nonexistent oversight. Full inquiries and public hearings are vital if the rich and shadowy world of privatization is ever to be plumbed for the scandal it is nurturing. Taxpayers have only a vague notion of what’s gone on, mainly through reporting on the fantastic good fortune of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, whose contracts increased a whopping 600 percent across five years as the Iraq war costs cascaded. Not incidentally, privatization has been a cash cow in stirring campaign donations from successful contractors.

According to one recent audit reported in The Washington Post, among 49 privatized contracts, three out of five were awarded noncompetitively, lacked oversight, and raised questions of legality. What’s been going on out there? This question cries out for an answer from the new Congress.

While Waxman toils in this Herculean effort in the house, Sen. Patrick Leahy (pictured), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will undertake a similar effort in the Senate.

Well, at least there will be an effort to find out what has been going on in Iraq. As Kos notes here, Sen. Joe Lieberman of the Repug Mouthpiece But Pretending To Be An Independent party utterly copped out on investigating the contractor fraud that occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina (and, in the process, probably dealt the death blow to the re-election prospects of Dem Sen. Mary Landrieu next year, who I’ll admit is hardly innocent herself).