Fiscal Stimulus (or can you say "Waste, Fraud and Abuse"?)

A letter from a reader (to Greg Mankiw's blog):

I read your blog on a daily basis and I've noted your skepticism about the
monstrous bailout package being considered by the incoming Obama administration.
In reading all of the econblogs I can find, I'm struck by the lack of practical
knowledge both there and within the circle of advisers Obama has
assembled.

I work for the DoD and when the Department of Homeland Security was
established,we helped them with many things, not the least of which was
contracting. To make a long story short, you cannot juice up a government
agency's budget by tens of billions (or in the case of the stimulus package,
hundreds of billions) and expect them to be able to process the paperwork to
contract it out, much less oversee the projects or even choose them with any
kind of hope for success. It's like trying to feed a Pomeranian a 25 lb turkey.
It's madness.

It was years before DHS got the situation under control and between the
start and when they finally assembled a sufficiently capable team of lawyers,
contracting officials, technical experts and resource managers, most of the
money was totally wasted. Now take the DHS situation and multiply it by 20 and
you've got the Obama stimulus package. Even if they hand the money to existing
governmental agencies, the situation will be the same. Those existing agencies
are working full time administering thebudgets they have. They can't just add a
zero at the end of each contract and be done with it.

Lastly, I've seen no business case analysis for this investment. I've
seen lots of people referring to models and charts and graphs and history, but
I've seen no analysis indicating that any of this will give you even a modest
ROI....

Stop looking at models and equations and theoretical constructs for a
while and look at the practical considerations of the stimulus package. I've
been doing this sort of thing for quite a while and I'm convinced it's doomed
from the start. If they feel the need to blast a trillion dollars into confetti,
then tax cuts would make the most sense. Even if the public used the money to
pay down debt, that would be a good thing as it would transfer the debt burden
from the consumer to the government making the consumer feel a little bit like
spending again.