WAR -- The Money [Part 19]

This is what happens when you have a get along, go along Congress in place during five years of deadly, costly war. Let's see if John McBush makes getting the defense contractors to pay the $3 billion they are in arrears in taxes part of his "end the waste" campaign. Or will he turn his head, avoid the inconsistency, and just keep shoveling the money at the defense budget pirate profiteers as the war goes on, and on, and on . . .
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April 27, 2008
Editorial
Tracking the Spoils of the Private Sector

There are so many barn doors to be closed on the Bush administration’s wasteful, murky world of government contractors that Congress barely knows where to begin. The House has made a start in plugging the multibillion-dollar loophole that the White House let slip into its promised crackdown on fraudulent contractors.

An executive mandate that contracted companies report misuse of taxpayers’ dollars to the Justice Department somehow managed to exempt work performed overseas. A drafting error, says the White House. But one, of course, that would further insulate the administration’s favored war contractors from ever answering for waste and fraud. There have been dozens of offenses, including kickbacks and bribes in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than $102 billion has been spent on contracts. The Senate must approve the loophole closer.

The House voted as well to address another long-running boondoggle: the brazen failure of contractors to pay federal taxes, even as they are enriched by taxpayers in winning government business. More than 60,000 federal contractors owe $7.7 billion in back taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office. Almost half of the deadbeats are defense contractors who owe the Treasury $3 billion. Anyone shocked? . . .
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