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This time, its a $24 billion Coast Guard project.

The Coast Guard's newest cutter, the flagship of a $24 billion plan to modernize the nation's coastal fleet, suffers from significant design flaws, and the service has failed to properly supervise the contractors doing the work, government inspectors have found. The 418-foot National Security Cutter is the largest ship the Coast Guard has ever commissioned, but as designed would be limited in its ability to venture far from U.S. shores in search of drug smugglers and terrorists, according to a report scheduled to be released Monday.

Technical experts said the design of the vessel was likely to result in "fatigue cracks" that would sharply increase maintenance costs and shorten the ship's useful life. The report also said the Coast Guard appeared ill-equipped to supervise the project's contracting team, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which had been given wide latitude in running the program.

The agency lacks the "appropriate workforce, business processes, and management controls for executing a major acquisition program" like this one, the report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general says. "The Coast Guard is still trying to come from behind and create the organization needed to manage the program."

The Coast Guard and its contractors hindered the audit of the program, known as Deepwater, after ignoring years of warnings from technical experts about the ships' designs, the report says[...]

The inspector general's report is the latest in a series of audits that have faulted the Department of Homeland Security for its failure to manage contracts for its most complex and demanding missions. Deepwater was the largest project on a list of 32 Homeland Security contracts worth $34 billion cited in July by the House Government Reform Committee as marred by "significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement." Other projects singled out included the hiring of airport screeners and deploying baggage inspection equipment, as well as programs involving nuclear detection equipment, border sensors and emergency housing after Hurricane Katrina.

I really feel like a broken record here.

Our constitutional system was specifically designed so that the three co-equal branches would monitor and check one another. Yes, that is incredibly inefficient, but that's the point. The founders of this nation valued liberty above all else, including bureaucratic efficiency. And as any good conservative should already know, part of protecting individual liberty includes ensuring that the taxes collected from individuals are wisely spent. Clearly this generation of conservatives, however, don't understand that.