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Poohbah, none of these definitions of waste appear to have any effect on the velocity of money. As long as money changes hands, it's moving. I'm not sure I follow the waste aspect of your argument, but a strong argument can be made that government spending is often not economically optimal. For instance, the government can tax workers, pay them to bury the money in a hole, and then pay them to dig it back up. Sure, it's a job... sure, money moves in the economy... but it's economically wasteful. Nothing's being optimized, and the world is not being made a better, happier, more productive place--which is the whole point of economic theory and policy after all.

Poohbah, none of these definitions of waste appear to have any effect on the velocity of money.

The key thing to understand is that government spending, for all of its massive AMOUNT, actually moves money quite slowly. It's not unheard of for federal contractors to go from six months to over two years without getting paid. (Incidentally, the odds of getting stiffed appear to increase with the basic constitutional legitimacy of the contract; Senator Pettifogger's pork barrel projects get paid for in a relatively timely fashion, while many defense contractors wait YEARS to see a check.) It's in the nature of the beast; any expenditure of public monies SHOULD be accompanied by due diligence to ensure that Uncle is not defrauded.

Anything that increases the total money spent by the government inevitably slows the velocity of that money.