Government Waste

Today's Washington Post:

When the FBI asked Congress this spring to provide $3.6 million in the war spending bill for its Gulfstream V jet, it said the money was needed to ensure that the aircraft, packed with state-of-the-art security and communications gear, could continue to fly counterterrorism agents on "crucial missions" into Iraq.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the bureau has made similar annual requests to maintain and fuel the $40 million jet on grounds that it had a "tremendous impact" on combating terrorism by rapidly deploying FBI agents to "fast-moving investigations and crisis situations" in places such as Afghanistan.

But the jet that the FBI originally sold to lawmakers in the late 1990s as an essential tool for battling terrorism is now routinely used to ferry FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to speeches, public appearances and field office visits.

So we are using a state of the art jet, designed to monitor and combat terrorism, to taxi around the FBI director.

Well this sounds somewhat familiar to me. As matter of fact, this story strikes a very similar note to this one:

In June of 2006, [Michael] Leavitt [Secretary of Health and Human services] came under criticism for misappropriation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Gulfstream III Emergency Response aircraft to, primarily, promote the newly reformed Medicare plan.

Critics argue that Leavitt irresponsibly has used the aircraft since January of 2006, logging over $700,000 worth of flight time in the 14 seat private jet. Leavitt’s office maintains that the use of the aircraft was necessary and legal since the Senate Appropriations Committee approved his use of the aircraft, and commercial services could not meet the deadlines required by his engagements. During two recent emergencies that the CDC has required use of the aircraft, they were forced to privately charter a different plane since the CDC’s GIII was in use by Leavitt.[1]

So we have top people in the Bush administration misusing equipment meant for the safety of our nation. If a citizen of this country interferes with an emergency vehicle (police car, fire truck, ambulance, etc.), they are charged with interfering with emergency response. Why aren't top government officials held to the same standards?

This is nothing more than abuse of tax payer dollars by the part who is supposed to stand for smaller government. Just remember - the Republicans won't question this behavior though (and most likely try to block any Democratic investigation into it). This doesn't have the priority of something so wasteful, as say; the Clintons Christmas card list.

When you can't manage situations, then you must throw money at it. That seems to be the Republican way of dealing things and it causes a big mess and a bigger burden for the U.S. tax payer:

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

So what has this lack of oversight on the part of our government cost us? Take your blood pressure medicine then read on:

The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

Congress has said FEMA is broken, as well as the media and a vast number of Americans. Of course old "stay the course" Bush doesn't feel that way. Well here is another perfect example of just how broken FEMA is. Another part of our government destroyed by this administration and we are left to clean up the mess. Incompetence does not even begin to describe it.