Our federal goverment has amply demonstrated its complete incompetence to process any form of official paperwork. The Katrina relief program and the more recent passport debacle are just two examples. Yet this same bungling bureaucracy would have us believe that they could successfully process paperwork for 20 million illegal aliens who are suddenly granted legal status.

In their dreams!

Today’s issue of USA Today carries an article about the massive fraud perpetrated by scammers following the Katrina disaster:

Katrina fraud swamps system
By Brad Heath

Federal agents investigating widespread fraud after the Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 are sifting through more than 11,000 potential cases, a backlog that could take years to resolve.

Authorities have fielded so many reports of people cheating aid programs, swindling contracts and scamming charities after the hurricanes that Homeland Security inspectors, who typically police disaster aid scams, have been “swamped,” says David Dugas, the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge….

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita triggered more than $7 billion in disaster aid to Gulf Coast households, plus billions more in government contracts and rebuilding projects. Allegations of fraud have accompanied that assistance….

The Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has referred 11,000 potential fraud cases to Homeland Security and a handful of other law enforcement agencies. Each of those was screened first to make sure there was some possibility of fraud.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, identified another 22,000 cases… The government’s latest complete tally of its investigations, in September, listed more than 1,700 open criminal cases…. The cases include allegations of fake Social Security numbers or addresses….

In a rush to be compassionate, the federal government has wasted untold sums of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money on Katrina scams. And they were just narrowly prevented, by a massive public outcry, from institutionalizing a similar mismanaged giveaway for the estimated 20 million illegal aliens living within our borders.

In addition to the inability of federal agencies to handle the disbursement of Katrina relief, we also have before our eyes the spectacle of the US passport disasters:

How the passport mess got so bad
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Peter Pae

….Federal officials in Washington, D.C., acknowledge they failed to anticipate just how much the post-Sept. 11 travel regulations would fuel demand for passports, did not hire enough workers to handle the increase and neglected to notice or react to signs of a burgeoning problem early this spring….

For nearly two years, federal officials knew the revised rules were coming, along with a crush of applications. …during a packed subcommittee hearing on the passport backlog, senators assailed Marta Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs.

“We want to know who is accountable, why this mess happened,” said Sen Bill Nelson, D-Fla., the panel’s chairman.

Acknowledging the department’s miscalculation, Harty said employees had been swamped by “a record-setting demand in a compressed period of time.”….

The regulations grew out of recommendations made by the Sept. 11 Commission, which in 2004 called for a standardized form of identification for all U.S. travelers to boost border security. … Almost immediately, congressional leaders voiced concern that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had set overly ambitious deadlines for the program. … By last spring, skepticism had increased. A May 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that neither Homeland Security nor State was fully prepared. … when the requirement took effect Jan. 23, a backlog began to develop almost instantly. Even as calls to Congress from irate travelers began flooding in, Chertoff reassured the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the initiative was working well….

But already the average turnaround time to process a passport fee had grown from 24 hours to three weeks, as 2.1 million applications arrived in January — 600,000 more than expected. Citicorp, which processes the fees under a contract with the Treasury Department, added 400 workers to its already-expanded staff of 800 to clear the backlog.

Instead of fixing the problem, however, that sent a tidal wave of paperwork downstream to the State Department….

Before we, as citizens, allow our Congress to enact any new “comprehensive” legislation that creates another paperwork program, we must demand that they sucessfully manage the ones they already have in place. Until they demonstrate some administrative competence, any new initiative, no matter how well-intentioned, will just be another way to gouge the productivity of the American people.

Cross-posted from ADMC.