The New York Times report about Dennis Montgomery, who allegedly defrauded the Pentagon and CIA out of $20 million over almost a decade, and whose software caused multiple false alarms while doing nothing to fight terrorism, contains this interesting fact:
Hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery, previously raised by Bloomberg Markets and Playboy, provide a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of government contracting. A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing.
That’s $285 billion of spend on contractors who have committed real fraud, versus $1 billion of imaginary fraud. Perhaps some serious DC player will explain why the “math demands” we cut entitlements, yet we’re not even discussing shaving a few hundred billion dollars of waste from the Pentagon budget. And maybe when they’re done telling us why those dollars don’t count, they can also explain why we can’t just let the Bush tax cuts expire, which would cut the deficit to 3% of GDP in one fell swoop.
But Serious People Know This Doesn’t CountPost + Comments (71)