Which President gave

[90-percent]

Which President gave the first no bid contract to Halliburton?

Bill Clinton.

Anybody have some insights on this? I'm the sole lefty on my car boards and never knew this!

Thanks

-90% Jimmy

[Bucky]

1. Not surprising.

I'm no Clinton basher, but he was hardly unfavorable to the Military-Industrial Complex, of which Halliburton was a key player in 1990s. They did okay by him, although obviously they didn't clean up to the same extent they have under Bush.

For some bulk items such as the small ticket supplies Halliburton deals it, there might be some economic logic to the occasional no-bid contract. A client and a provider build a relationship over the years and keeping both happy sometimes makes sense, even if there's a short term budget loss.

The way I'd respond to the people on the board is to say "So what?" It's still graft and corruption when it's carried out at this level of multi billion dollar contracts and the system overbilling and nondelivery that Halliburton engages in--with them never being held to account for their corrupt practices. It's still screwing the taxpayer and it's still all based on an anti-capitalist anti-competitive model that Republicans routinely abuse in order to plunder the people's treasury and run the government into debt.

In my lifetime two presidents have consistantly reduced the national deficit or balanced the federal budget to start paying down the national debt: Carter and Clinton--both liberal Democrats. The two presidents who ran up the biggest increases in the size of government and the size of the national deficit and debt are Reagan and Bush Jr, the two most consistantly conservative Republicans in my lifetime.

Your car board friends can talk about ideology or they can talk about facts. They facts, however, show Republicans are big spenders who hate balancing the budget.