Many Republican and Democratic officials conned.

If you want to read about government waste, look no further than during the Bush Administration, and the people who were conned up and down the ladder into spending tens of millions of dollars on bogus intelligence software from Dennis Montgomery:

Jim Gibbons (NV Rep - R, NV Governor);
Dick Cheney (R);
Donald Kerr;
George Tenet (D);
Jack Kemp (NY Rep - R);
Conrad Burns (MT Sen - R);
Joseph Liberatore.

But according to the NYT, this was not an isolated incident: " A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing."

So there's your problem Tea Party folks -- you're looking in the wrong place for waste.  It's not in the EPA or the  Department of Energy, but in defense / security / intelligence spending at the CIA and the military.