Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Pork Barrel Spending’ Category

Justice Department Official Awards $500,000 Grant to Golf Group

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 10th, 2008

Give. Me. A. Break:

A senior Justice Department official says a $500,000 federal grant to the World Golf Foundation is an appropriate use of money designed to deal with juvenile crime in America.  

“We need something really attractive to engage the gangs and the street kids, golf is the hook,” said J. Robert Flores, the administrator of the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the World Golf Foundation’s First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by the trade journal Youth Today.

“I don’t know why people insist on denigrating it, it’s a sound program,” Flores told ABC News.

U.S. deficit at record high and rising

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 24th, 2008

Christian Science Monitor:

Deficit? What deficit? Three big intersecting events – war in Iraq, the economic downturn, and the presidential race – this year have combined to knock fiscal discipline far down the list of Washington’s policy priorities.

In fact, the federal deficit hit an all-time high of $311 billion for the first half of this budget year, reports the Treasury Department. And Congress is discussing further moves to help distressed homeowners and stimulate the economy. Iraq and Afghanistan will cost at least another $170 billion in supplemental funds through the end of next year.

Given the need, the current rush of spending might be understandable, say some deficit hawks. But they worry that Washington will use recession and war as excuses to stop caring about red ink altogether. They also warn that current deficits leave Washington ill-prepared to face an imminent explosion of spending on Social Security and Medicare caused by retiring baby boomers.

More

HUD chief inattentive to crisis, critics say

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 13th, 2008

Another Bush bozo out the door due to scandal:

In late 2006, as economists warned of an imminent housing market collapse, housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson repeatedly insisted that the mounting wave of mortgage failures was a short-term “correction.”

He pushed for legislation that would make it easier for federally backed lenders to make mortgage loans to risky borrowers who put less money down. He issued a rule that was criticized by law enforcement authorities because it could increase the difficulty of detecting and proving mortgage fraud.

As Jackson leaves office this week, much of the attention on his tenure has been focused on investigations into whether his agency directed housing contracts to his friends and political allies. But critics say an equally significant legacy of his four years as the nation’s top housing officer was gross inattention to the looming housing crisis.

They contend that Jackson ignored warnings from within his agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose inspector general told Congress that some of the secretary’s efforts were “ill-advised policy” and likely to put more families at risk of losing their homes.

During Jackson’s years on the job, foreclosures for loans insured by HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) have risen and default rates have hit a record high.

All the while, Jackson enjoyed a chef and a full-time security detail that trailed him to Washington social events. His office launched a new $7 million auditorium and cafeteria at HUD’s headquarters, money that some within the agency believed should have been directed toward housing for the poor. His office solicited an emergency bid to obtain oil portraits of Jackson and four other HUD secretaries at a cost to taxpayers of $100,000.

While Rome burned…

GAO: Feds Live Lavishly on Credit Cards

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 9th, 2008

I guess membership has its privileges: 

Federal employees charged millions of dollars for Internet dating, tailor-made suits, lingerie, lavish dinners and other questionable expenses to their government credit cards over a 15-month period, congressional auditors say.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, examined spending controls across the federal government following reports of credit-card abuse at departments including Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

The review of card spending at more than a dozen departments from 2005 to 2006 found that nearly 41 percent of roughly $14 billion in credit-card purchases, whether legitimate or questionable, did not follow procedure — either because they were not properly authorized or they had not been signed for by an independent third party as called for in federal rules to deter fraud.

For purchases over $2,500, nearly half — or 48 percent — were unauthorized or improperly received.

Out of a sample of purchases totaling $2.7 million, the government could not account for hundreds of laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras worth more than $1.8 million. In one case, the U.S. Army could not say what happened to computer items making up 16 server configurations, each of which cost nearly $100,000.

Agencies often could not provide the required paperwork to justify questionable purchases. Investigators also found that federal employees sometimes double-billed or improperly expensed lavish meals and Internet dating for many months without question from supervisors; the charges were often noticed only after auditors or whistle-blowers raised questions.

Continued…

Counting people is hard (for the government) to do

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 4th, 2008

Census Bureau scales back handheld plans, while project costs keep rising:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Census Bureau’s plan to rely on automation, instead of paper, to conduct much of the 2010 national census is now officially a boondoggle. The agency is facing a cost overrun of up to $3 billion on the census, as well as angry members of Congress who are looking for someone to blame.

And Census Bureau officials are scaling back their automation plans, reducing the 500,000 custom-built handheld devices that the agency is buying from Harris Corp. to little more than bit players in the next census. At the same time, the size of the five-year contract that the Census Bureau signed with Harris in 2006 is more than doubling, from just under $600 million to about $1.3 billion.

The mood was caustic at a hearing on the census held here today by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee members received the bad news that the 2010 census may now cost as much as $14.5 billion. And they seemed incredulous about the increase in some cost estimates, such as the ballooning of a $37 million expenditure for an IT help desk to nearly $220 million. Or the addition of $30 million to build a new data center.

So they burned through $600M on technology they won’t use. The result is an additional $3 billion in added expense?

This truly is a government operation!

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