“Some specialists said it appears the government is poised to make the same sorts of mistakes it made after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The specialists say there is no systematic way to know how much of the contracting work has been done, even on the shovel-ready projects.“We don’t have the means to make sure we don’t blow through billions of dollars and give it to the wrong people,” said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. “We’re on track to lose billions, if not tens of billions, to waste, fraud and abuse.”[…]Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a group that represents government contractors, does not oppose the stimulus package. But he said the government appears to lack the planning and the “infrastructure and architecture” upfront to manage the spending. “Without it,” he said, “we’re going to have a repeat of what we’ve seen over and over and over, from major weapons systems to Katrina and Iraq.”“
A sad, ironic, and bitter pill to swallow - the seeming constant that we can all rely on - the government will continue to offer solutions for problems that aren’t well thought out or controlled in their execution. Wow, how reassuring that we get the same from both parties…okay, not reassuring at all actually. Why do men who are careful about their own investments so quick to rashly ‘spend’ our way out of this?
