Amidst all of the government-bashing comments, I note that no one has remarked on a few things:

  * we don't have any actual evidence to support the author's claim that this sort of bloat is routine  (remember, plural of anecdote isn't data)

  * we don't know what kind of wasted money gets tossed around in major corporations (assumptions about how corporations must be lean do not constitute actual evidence)

  * we don't even have a way to find out what sort of bloat and waste takes place in corporate america - the government at least lets us find out

so it maybe doesn't make a lot of sense, in an observable-evidence sort of way, to make with the government-bashing..