[squidfood]

Yes. I should have added that I understand the need for basic checks and auditing (and that the public expects us to be uniformly fraudulent as well as incompetent), but that the level of checks and removal from the process of experts who know requirements goes far beyond this need.

It's really all about optics rather than reasonable checks - no department wants to be the one that Congress targets, so especially in poisonous political environments the "checks" are significantly more expensive IMO than the actual "waste, fraud, and abuse" they guard against.