December 21, 2007 12:17PM

Government ID Card Program Off the Rails

By Jim Harper

"The Internal Revenue Service paid a contractor $188,000 to provide one person to do clerical work over 11 months."

That's the opening line from an AP report on waste in the implementation of a Bush Administration federal worker identity card.

Here's a little more:

The IRS was responsible for developing and implementing the program to provide identification cards to about 150,000 employees at the Treasury Department. The projected cost of the program was $421 million over 14 years.

Check my math: Is that $2,800 per card?

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