You will not get a valid defense of this from liberals - there isn't a valid defense. There isn't even a defense close enough to valid to be spun.
This is clearly corruption. Period.
Any liberal trying to defend it will only look foolish.
They are similar, war on poverty, war on drugs, etc - all of them are an excuse for the government to spend an ever increasing percentage of our money, and all of them create far more problems than they solve.