In fact, they engaged in fairly common DC-style budget fraud--double-counting revenues, underestimating costs, etc.
Google faces questions about declining ad budgets, click fraud and product overload but the company's dominance continues to grow.
£7bn a year is going missing from health budgets through fraud and financial error, according to the former head of the NHS's Counter Fraud Services.
So the budget is a fraud.
So the Ryan budget is a fraud; Mr. Ryan talks loudly about the evils of debt and deficits, but his plan would actually make the deficit bigger even as it inflicted huge pain in the name of deficit reduction.
There is no reason for home heating, student aid or community block grants to be cut while there is a futile war in Afghanistan that enriches military contractors, a Pentagon budget that encourages fraud, subsidies for oil companies and a system that encourages corporations and financial institutions to avoid paying taxes.
Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, described the Republican-written budget as a "fraud" that set artificially low spending limits in order to pay for the $1.3 trillion tax-cut package sought by President Bush and approved by Congress last month.
In positions with the Attorney General's Office, the NYC Human Resources Administration, the NYC Comptroller's Office, and as counsel to the Governor's Office under Mario Cuomo, Laurie's work affected everything from campaign finance legislation to welfare reform, the state budget to charities fraud.
The amounts to be awarded, he said, are far from astronomical for a city with a $60 billion budget and "robust fraud- and waste-prevention measures," which include a staff that has doubled in eight years and an additional layer of review for stimulus contracts.
Thus my old sparring partner, Peter Oborne, savours Darling's "cunning duplicitous mind" beneath the boring exterior and – as an ex-stockbroker – solemnly proclaims that if a FTSE company had issued such a budget statement the fraud squad would have been called in.
