Prepare to Waste Billions

From today's WaPo,

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will receive most of the $62 billion Congress has approved for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, setting up a major test of the agency's ability to distribute the cash and monitor the private contractors who will do much of the work.

FEMA's track record in managing much smaller amounts of money has raised concerns. It made millions of dollars in questionable payments to South Florida residents after Hurricane Frances last year, investigators found, in part because the agency's contractors had hired inspectors who lacked training or oversight. A recent audit by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general questioned whether FEMA's acquisition workforce was qualified.

What Josh said,

We're going to rue the day on this one. Even if FEMA were a perfectly managed agency and existed in a clean administration, it is simply not an agency that is set up to handle money on this scale -- certainly not in a case like this which will involve rebuilding a substantial section of the country. And of course, it's not a well-run agency at the moment. And this administration is defined by cronyism and insider deals.
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Democrats should be speaking with one voice on this one: accountability, an independent commission to investigate what went wrong and no insider deals with taxpayer money.

Remember, these are the folks that LOST 9 BILLION DOLLARS OF OUR MONEY in Iraq.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 [CPA] is unable to account for the funds.