Bush Hack Promotes Fraud and Waste

GSA Chief Seeks to Cut Budget For Audits

Leave it to Republicans, who constantly shoot off their mouths about waste in government, to appoint a former contractor to oversee the government agency responsible for $56 billion worth of contracts. And wouldn't you know it -- the contractor wants to cut back on audits!

Contract Oversight Would Be Reduced

By Scott Hingham and Rober O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post

The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews.

GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.

The GSA is responsible for managing about $56 billion worth of contracts each year for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security and other agencies.

Doan compared Inspector General Brian D. Miller and his staff to terrorists, according to a copy of the notes obtained by The Washington Post.

"There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and, internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators," Doan said, according to the notes. Before joining the GSA in August 2005, Miller served as a federal prosecutor and worked on the government's case against al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.