Haste makes waste, so a certain amount of mismanagement and abuse was to be expected when the government rushed relief after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But nothing like this — up to $2 billion in scams, waste and bureaucratic bungles, The New York Times calculated. That’s nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as of mid-June.
Examples cited by the Times include $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance to about 1,100 prison inmates, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.
Said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: “The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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13 Comments
The 2.2 trillion of our national debt that is owed to foreign countries is a nightmare – and a national security risk.
On the face of it, this is shocking. But we should remember this was a crisis on a scale we’ve never seen. Let’s not forget that we demanded speed, not accuracy in the hurricane relief efforts.
Actually, XXX, We got neither.
Wasting taxmoney is what goverment does. At all levels
Renovations at 416000 per evacuee, sounds like KKR must have gotten another no-bid contract.
Renovations at 416000 per evacuee, sounds like Haliburton must have gotten another no-bid contract.
Granted FEMA is obviously staffed by incompetents. But…..can we must place blame where it belongs, on the crooks who are taking illegal advantage of a horrible situation.
Those cards/funds were intended for people who lost everything…and thieves are stealing.
Blame the government for the actions of the crooks? Isn’t that just a little like blaming banks for bank robberies because the banks have money?
Let’s go after the thieves..like those people recently sentenced to 15 years for looting. Throw the book at the con artists, at the scam runners, at the thieves. If it weren’t for them, this FEMA program would be praised for the life saving plan it was designed to be.
uhhh….didn’t we have a thread on this months ago?
Thieves always take advantage when they have the opportunity to do so. You can blame them AND the blantant incompetency of FEMA. Brownie “did a heck of a job”, didn’t he? Nothing like having George’s good ole’ boys in charge!
Unfortunately, regardless of which party is in the whitehouse, congress, or any other part of government there is waste, an atrocious amount of waste.
I think the last time I checked many years ago, the average amount of money that the government couldn’t account for each year was around 19 billion dollars.
19 billion dollars just gone… who knows where it went?
It is called a bureaucracy.
But please, don’t let this stop you from trying to blame Bush for EVERYTHING…
OK, we won’t.
Of course we should place blame on the crooks but we should also demand accountability on the part of the people in charge of this mess. i.e. BushdaBum and his incompetant cronoes.
Ur right Ben, accountability is necessary but ill bet you the BushDaBum supports will still try to spin this to place blame squarely on the Dems for what ever reason…