Pentagon Inspector Details Billions in Contractor Waste

clipped from www.govexec.com The acting Pentagon inspector general Thursday detailed for the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee billions of dollars of waste from excessive prices, unjustified expenses and fraud and criminal activity in military contracts, largely due to an understaffed, poorly trained contracting work force coping with an explosive growth in spending. The examples provided by Gordon Heddell ranged from Marine Corps officials failing to determine what were "fair and reasonable" prices for armored vehicles rushed to Iraq in a $9.1 billion program to a firm that fraudulently charged $24 million for shipping thousands of dollars of small parts to the war zone. The owners' final act before being caught was charging $998,798 to ship two flat washers worth 19 cents each, Heddell said.

Rep. James Moran, D-Va., chairing the subcommittee, said that we're spending more on contractors than we are on military personnel and benefits. Also troubling:

[Hedell] also described how private contractors were given control of a program to provide encrypted "common access cards" to military facilities -- including classified spaces -- and gave cards to their employees without proof of background security checks.

Anyone notice how we have to bailout banks and car companies and airlines and homeowners, but we don't have to bail out military contractors?

Yeah, that's because we already have.