The new visitors center under construction at the U.S. Capitol has become a money pit. Big surprise. The project was supposed to cost $265 million. Now estimates are as much as $584 million, or about $1,000 a square foot. That prompted The New York Times to suggest in an editorial that the center deserves a more candid title: “The Big Debt Dig, perhaps, as the center’s cost overruns mount apace with the egregious mass of deficit, debt and interest run-ups that will mark the larger budget folly of the Bush era for generations to come.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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9 Comments
What do you expect from this administration? Bush is hell bent on bankrupting our country, and he’s doing a GREAT job I might add.
My god that is expensive. The money that people spend. Didn’t the state of Kansas spent like $700 million to renovate the Capital and put an underground parking garage in it? Guess we can forego education funding so that legislators can park and walk to the Capital without getting wet in the rain.
This is Bush’s fault?
If you look at every aspect of government there is waste no matter who is in the white house.
Gee, it actually cost more than DOUBLE what they said it would?
I guess it isnt like that could happen with the prescription drug plan, or the true cost of tax cuts, or…the cost of the war in Iraq.
It probably wont happen to the Katrina rebuilding effort either, what with the accurate cost projections and the federal oversight of contracting and money distribution. I mean, look how well FEMA did with the trailor distribution.
Does anyone else see a pattern here? Lie about projected costs, give the contracts to your buddies (read haliburton), use some “enron like” accounting, run up more deficits to pay the true cost, cut taxes and say that will pay for it, then lie some more about the whole thing.
I guess we couldnt see that coming.
First of all, how did anyone “lie” about projected costs?
You waste no time jumping straight to the “lie” accusation with no proof what-so-ever.
Nathan, if they said it would cost “x” and it costs more than “double x”, they were either incredibly stupid and incompetent in their projections, or they lied!!!
It doesnt matter if it is tax cuts, medicare, or the war in iraq. The white house and the republican controlled house and senate “projections” are always mostly spin, not based on real numbers. And you wonder why we dont buy the “trust me” line?
Of course there are always errors… and contingency funds should be built into any projection to cover unforseens. That is the way generally accepted accounting proceedures work, not that this administration has any respect for those proceedures.
No one who does cost projections as a professional should be off more than double. That is either gross incompetence or deliberate “disinformation”.
You might recognize that term as “truthiness”… better known as a lie.
The sad fact is the goverment has thousands of such projects. That waste millions of dollars per project adds a lot of money. I thought that republicans were supposed for cutting spending and elimanting waste yet there worse than when democrats were in charge.
The federal government wastes money? NOOOOO, REALLY!?
Unhyphenated AmericanCX
Bush has never vetoed a bill since he took office. Congress caught on to this and attached all sorts of pork barrel projects to their bills and as a result taxpayers have spent millons on wasteful government spending. The Medicare prescription drug plan will cost taxpayers TRILLONS. How much has the war in Iraq cost us so far? And how much longer are we going to be pouring money into that fiasco?Bush has expanded government and spent money better than any democrat I’ve ever seen.