By choosing to subcontract the stimulus, health reform and finance reform to the Democratic leadership, he ended up with shoddy bills that Republicans could safely vote against and that many Democrats are now anxious to distance themselves from.
The amount is almost double the £11.8bn bill for shoddy pension sales from the late 1980s to early 90s, and dwarfs the £2.7bn for mortgage endowment mis-selling.
Responding to an E.P.A. estimate that as much as 75percentt of the removal work so far has been shoddy and unsafe, the bill would require the agency to establish training and accreditation for contractors and mandate that school districts employ only certified workmen.
They, in turn, have deployed a small army of lawyers and lobbyists trying to persuade the Obama administration to relax or waive a body of older laws intended to thwart health care monopolies, and to protect against shoddy care and fraudulent billing of patients or Medicare.
The point is that we've had an environment in which officials inclined to do favors for their business friends, and contractors inclined to pad their bills or do shoddy work, didn't have to worry much about being exposed.
Law-enforcement agencies across the country oppose the bill, in part because shoddy record-keeping would make it difficult for cops to verify that someone actually has an official permit from another state.
To Republican congressmen of this ilk, the Senate payroll-tax bill was a typically shoddy Washington compromise; it didn't resolve any outstanding disputes but merely shooed them away for a bit.
The house closed last fall, with former employees describing unpaid bills, doctored records and shoddy care.
By any account, it was shoddy behaviour.
Worse is that the measure is more supportive of the mortgage industry, whose shoddy practices stoked the crisis, than of troubled homeowners, threatened communities or taxpayers who may have to foot the bill.
