The U.S. Congress is set to open the Capitol Visitors Center this week, unveiling a project that will end up costing taxpayers over $600 million dollars. With the original estimate set at $71 million the cost overrun on this project is over a half billion dollars. Even by Congressional standards that is something. From the Washington Post:

Take, for example, spending. What was proposed as a $71 million project in the early 1990s became a $265 million endeavor a decade later. By the time work got underway in 2002, the price tag was up to $368 million. Tomorrow, the ribbon will be cut on a $621 million project.

Then there was the congressional penchant for thinking big. The center’s architects were ordered to include 150,000 square feet of “shell space” for some future day when Congress might need more office area. The finished center is about two-thirds the size of the entire Capitol.

Then there have been delays, a malady common to many federal endeavors. The project once was expected to be finished in time for the presidential inauguration — in January 2005. As that date neared, the center was about half done, so the completion date was bumped ahead to spring 2006.

Six months after President Bush was sworn in for a second term, the Government Accountability Office reported that the architects and contractors were making so many mistakes and facing so many unexpected problems that March 2007 was probably more realistic. When that target rolled around without a ribbon-cutting, project officials were summoned before a House subcommittee to explain why, and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) scolded them for overseeing “a monument to government inefficiency, ineptitude and excessiveness.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) said, “I’ve never seen a bigger boondoggle in my life. It’s like they’re playing with Monopoly money.”

They apparently are playing with monopoly money! Mark this one under drinking champagne on the deck of the Titanic.