photo via Flickr by cenz

A week ago, I posted this story about waste in the Hurricane aid situation. Congress got its laced panties in a bunch about $1.4 billion in waste (or 16 percent of the total). Following up on my point that the corporate contractor welfare system was much, much worse, a new report finds that the government has spent $745 billion on contractors in the last five years. Check it out:

The report identifies 118 federal contracts worth $745.5 billion that have been found by government officials to include significant waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement. Each of the Bush Administration’s three signature initiatives — homeland security, the war and reconstruction in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina recovery — has been characterized by wasteful contract spending.

So if we assume 16 percent of that was waste, then we're at a cool $119 billion. That's enough to fund the Veteran's Affairs office, the Department of State and probably Homeland Security.