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President Obama and members of Congress told federal agencies earlier this year to avoid awarding funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to contractors with troubled histories of work for the federal government.

But that isn't happening at numerous agencies, a Washington Post analysis shows. So far, 33 federal departments and agencies have awarded more than $1.2 billion in stimulus contracts to at least 30 companies that are ranked by one watchdog group as among the most egregious offenders of state and federal laws.

Government records show that as a group, these contractors have sold defective products, manufactured safety tests, submitted false travel claims and padded contracts with fraudulent fees.

"Even a simple Google search could raise red flags about some contractors' performance," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.).

Honeywell International, for example, is defending itself against a Justice Department lawsuit accusing it of selling defective shields for bulletproof vests to the Defense and Homeland Security departments, costing the federal government tens of millions of dollars. But that did not prevent the company from winning $2.9 million in stimulus contracts from the Air Force.

On a larger scale, UT-Battelle, a partnership of the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute, has been awarded 43 Recovery Act contracts worth more than $331 million by the Department of Energy for work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In every instance, competitive bidding rules were waived, but officials said the contracts were largely extensions of competitively bid work that was already underway at the site.

Obama explicitly warned against awarding contracts without competitive bidding in a memo released to agency heads weeks after he signed the act, saying they create "a risk that taxpayer funds will be spent on contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, subject to misuse." (So far, half of the $16 billion awarded under the stimulus has gone to contractors that did not have to compete for the work.)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102804540_pf.html

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Originally posted by L0A1:
I can't fault President Obama himself for this, but his Administration should have been watching for this.

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Originally posted by I_M_Qwerty:

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Originally posted by L0A1:
I can't fault President Obama himself for this, but his Administration should have been watching for this.

Isn't Biden the "Stimulus Czar" and responsible for ensuring that their is no waste, fraud, or abuse ...???