George W. Bush has had a lot of trouble with the General Services Administration, the office in charge of procurement -- and thus more than $50 billion in buying power -- for the federal government. Corruption under his administration's watch has been rampant, to put it mildly. In 2006, his former chief procurement officer, or GSA administrator, David Safavian was convicted on four felony counts for covering up his relationship with Jack Abramoff; he is currently in jail on an 18-month sentence. And now we learn from Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham of The Washington Post that there are yet more allegations of impropriety and possible illegality from inside President Bush's GSA.

A powerful House committee chairman released new details yesterday about a widening investigation into allegations of "improper conduct" by the chief of the U.S. General Services Administration.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), head of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said his investigators had obtained information that raises "further questions" about GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan's efforts to give a no-bid job to a longtime friend and professional associate.

Waxman also revealed new allegations that Doan "asked GSA officials in a January teleconference how the agency could be used to help Republican candidates," in possible violation of federal law.

As noted above, this is not the first time that there have been problems within the GSA. What's more, it is not the first time that a high-ranking Bush administration official has insinuated that access to federal funds is dependent on either support for President Bush or the Republican Party. It was almost one year ago that Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson relayed the following story about a minority-owned advertising company as a cautionary tale to minority business owners looking for federal grants, as the Dallas Business Journal reported then.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

It has been well over a century since the practice of handing out federal funds to political supporters of the administration in power was largely outlawed, but apparently the Bush White House apparently believes that such reforms are to be disregarded at will. As such, although there are times at which it might seem to some that the Democratic Congress is not moving forward issues (particularly Iraq) more than the previous Republican Congress did, it is so important to have a Democratic majority so that committee chairmen like Henry Waxman can root out this impropriety and expose the utter corruption of the Bush administration.

We are already beginning to see the administration buckle under scrutiny over matters such as the prosecutor purge. But such investigations are just the beginning. And as more improper actions and politicization of the executive branch is exposed, the closer we can come to undoing the great damage that has been done over the past six years since George W. Bush became president.