Report: Katrina Contractors Bilk Taxpayers To The Tune Of 63 Billion Dollars.

Source: AP via Yahoo News

Sixty-three billion dollars...wow, that's a lot of money to just throw away.

The business of being a Katrina contractor screwing the government and taxpayers is a very profitable one.

Need to make extra income for your so-called "business" in a hurry? You can do one of the following that as worked so well to this point:

1. Overstate your mileage claims--who's going to check it, anyway? Drove 50 miles, jot down 100, and call it a day.
2. Mix your debris improperly to drive inflate prices and drive up the time for removal. It's a government contract, so sit on it, baby!
3. When all else fails, send the same bill twice. You know there is no oversight, and this is a potential gold mine you are sitting on.

WASHINGTON -- While removing enough debris to cover Britain, contractors working on hurricane recovery have overbilled the government in a $63 billion operation that only will get more expensive, according to a House report Thursday.

Mileage claims were overstated to get extra fees, debris was mixed improperly to inflate prices and companies sent bills twice for removing the same loads, Democrats on the GOP-controlled House Government Reform Committee found.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who compiled the report for the hearing on Katrina contracting, also complained about layers of subcontractors that drove up costs.

A major contractor would take a large cut and pay smaller amounts to the subcontractors, down to the company with the truck hauling debris to the dump.

The above was total sarcasm on my part, but it does show a glaring problem in this country: lack of oversight in government spending and accountability for work done.

As a taxpayer, I want to know who is out checking these contracts and jobs to make sure this underhanded stuff doesn't keep going on.

I really wasn't amazed or shocked when this story broke as this administration loves to dole out wads of cash to friends of the GOP, and looking the other way in the name of profits is the official course of action 9 out of 10 times.

What really irks me is that Joe Citizen shoulders the largest percentage of the tax burden and watches his hard-earned tax monies go to waste.

Come on, get it together, guys on the Hill, and put an end to this waste!

This is not the wild west of Iraq where money flows like honey, and nobody is keeping track.

This is the U.S., the place where monies for disaster relief are already stretched thin, and these fundies need to be better spent and go further for the causes of the day.

I have a crazy idea--let's practice something extremely radical and unheard of so far from this Congress; fiscal responsibility.

It will be rough, but with a little meeting of the minds and people actually showing up for work in Congress, it can be done.

Tags: [underhanded scheme to bilk money out of the government], [$63 million], [Bush], [what happened to fiscal responsibility?], [Hurricane Katrina], [contractors in New Orleans try to screw government out of millions of dollars]