“Attacks on President Obama’s “crony capitalism” are a major theme of Mitt Romney’s campaign. And the stimulus typically figures prominently in these attacks. As Romney and his allies tell is, the Recovery Act was full of shady, wasteful giveaways to the administration’s friends and benefactors.
This argument is probably effective. Most Americans have no problem believing government programs are a boondoggle. The argument is also untrue—as in, the very opposite of true. Federal auditors watching over the Recovery Act have documented just $7.2 million in fraud, or about .001 percent of the $800 billion the federal government has distributed through the program. That’s astonishingly low. And that’s not because the auditors haven’t been looking.”
- Jonathan Cohn, Crony Capitalism, Minus the Cronies
Photo courtesy of Dead Homer Society
