From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishscrape (the bottom of) the barrelscrape (the bottom of) the barrelinformalUSE somethingACCEPT to have to use something even though it is not very good, because there is nothing better available It was clear that the party was scraping the barrel for competent politicians. → scrape
Examples from the Corpus
scrape (the bottom of) the barrel• At that time I thought we were scraping the barrel.• Has Hollywood scraped the barrel for bimbos?• Unions were bargaining for dental insurance, as if scraping the barrel to come up with new benefits. 