Remember this story? The Obama Administration rigged a contract process — up to and including stopping other companies from competing — in order to give an Obama-backing company a large contract for experimental smallpox vaccine that may or may not work.

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a “sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal.

We also learned that one of the newest members of the company’s board of directors is Andy Stern — the former SEIU boss and left-wing activist. The vaccine the company is producing?

An epidemiologist for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined it to be “a waste of time and a waste of money”. Smallpox was actually eradicated in the 1970s, existing now only in controlled environments. And even if it were to escape, the federal government already has upwards of $1 billion in proven vaccine supplies.

So you can imagine the contract is, shall we say, suspicious.

Now a Senate Democrat, seeking to distance herself from the administration and its growing number of scandals, is demanding an investigation.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has asked The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review the Obama administration’s award of a $443 million sole-source contract to a company owned by a major Democratic donor. …

Citing “serious questions” about the contract, the Los Angeles Times reported that McCaskill has asked the inspector general of HHS to investigate. McCaskill is the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting and Oversight.

Just how corrupt was the contract process?

In October 2010, Siga announced it had been awarded a multi-billion dollar contract to develop ST-246, despite the fact that the contract stipulated only a small business could be the winning bidder. A smaller company protested, and in response, the Obama Administration blocked everyone except Siga from bidding for a second offering of the contract.

The government’s justification for only talking to Siga was that an antiviral was needed within five years, and Siga was the only company who could do it. That justification troubled some HHS officials, one of whom called it “a stretch” in an internal email obtained by the paper. As much as $115 million in taxpayer money had already been spent developing the drug, which had not been approved by the FDA.

The worst part: The FDA can’t confirm the experimental vaccine will work without exposing test subjects (humans) to smallpox. Who wants to volunteer to be infected with smallpox to see if an unproven vaccine works? Any takers?

Another case of the Obama Administration funneling large sums of taxpayer money to Democratic donors. Nothing less.