Multimillion-dollar oops?

Friday, April 18, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

Under proposed rules, government contractors would be required to notify federal officials of any potential contract abuse or fraud worth $5 million or more.

The proposal came as a result of federal audits that showed hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted paying contractors who have not provided the services for which they were hired mostly on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Still, the initial set of rules contained a loophole that called for exempting contractors working for the United States. This loophole drew a barrage of criticism, prompting Bush administration officials to remove it from the proposal last week.

But members of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee this week demanded to know why this loophole existed in the first place, the Associated Press reports.

David Drabkin, acting chief acquisition officer of the General Services Administration, told the House panel that Bush administration officials “did not knowingly, thinkingly put in the exception,” and that “it got no real thought; it wasn’t examined.”

If Drabkin is to be believed, that means Bush administration officials didn’t intentionally try to give contractors the freedom to defraud American taxpayers. They did it by accident.

And somehow that’s better?

We don’t think so. Whether by design or out of ignorance, creating a loophole for contractors who bilk American taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars illustrates a pitiful lack of competence.