Monday, September 22, 2008

Bush history of financial oversight

As the Bush Administration furiously demands that they be given $700 billion with no oversight to dole out to Wall Street, Think Progress has gone to the trouble of typing up a 'greatest hits' of financial bungling by our elected betters. My favorites.

-$10 billion in spending on Iraq reconstruction was wasteful or poorly tracked. [GAO, 2/15/07]

-Halliburton overcharged the government $100 million for one day’s work in 2004. [Project on Government Oversight, 10/8/04]

-An estimated $2 billion in fraud and waste — nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June. [New York Times tally, 6/27/06]

-$1.7 billion in excessive fees and waste paid by the Pentagon to the Interior Department to manage federal lands. [Defense Department and Interior Department Inspectors General audit, 12/25/06]

-$1 trillion unaccounted for by the Pentagon, including 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. [GAO, 5/18/03]

But I'm sure they'll be even stricter with gobs more money and even less oversight, right?

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