Business As Usual Updates

Here's a front-page Washington Post headline to make fans of the status quo happy: "If Spending Is Swift, Oversight May Suffer Plan's Pace Could Leave Billions Waste."

And this was in the WaPo!

As reporter Robert O'Harrow puts it:

The Obama administration's economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it, according to documents and interviews with contracting specialists.

The $827 billion stimulus legislation under debate in Congress includes provisions aimed at ensuring oversight of the massive infusion of contracts, state grants and other measures. At the urging of the administration, those provisions call for transparency, bid competition, and new auditing resources and oversight boards.

But under the terms of the stimulus proposals, a depleted contracting workforce would be asked to spend more money more rapidly than ever before, while also improving competition and oversight. Auditors would be asked to track surges in spending on projects ranging from bridge construction and schools to research of "green" energy and the development of electronic health records -- a challenge made more difficult because many contracts would be awarded by state agencies.

And this skeptical tone reflects the reality of today's media. They are liberals, sure, but many of them are liberal libertarians--"liberaltarians," as Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute calls them. They don't really believe in this spending stuff.

But as the President said last Thursday night to the House Democrats:

So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.)

And as this transcript, from whitehouse.gov, shows, the House Democrats loved it.