US Government
Helping people save money by ripping them off

A recent article on contracting out in the US Forest Service notes that the savings were more than offset by unforeseen expenses. Whoops. Except this is typical. And, once a contractor is in place for a while, and connected politically, they can raise their price to anything they want. We need to understand why Bush and Clinton were pushing contracting out of federal work. When they put out RFP's at what federal employees are paid, they get no bids. They have to put out RFP's at a minimum of double what federal employees are paid, to get bids. It's not that the workers get that money, no, they are underpaid, the companies get to keep the other money, though. It's just like the earmark game, congressional representatives earmark federal money, and the company kicks back about 0.5% of what they get, for crummy products, as campaign contributions. A paper in Seattle did an expose on this. So here's the deal. They contract out the work, the companies make millions of dollars, Bush can claim they are reducing federal workers, and Bush and his buddies get all kinds of kickbacks. The shadow government of federal contracted workers now exceeds the entire federal workforce, and there is no oversight. There is no requirement at this time for cost-effectiveness analysis, i.E. They have no accounting whatsoever to assure that money is saved. Remember the $600 screwdrivers? The auditors who found that have all been laid off, by Bush, because he doesn't want those embarassments. Now the screwdrivers cost $6,000. That is how the Iraq ticket got up to $500 billion, and will reach $1 trillion soon. The entire amount of money paid for all medical stuff in this country yearly is $1 trillion, by comparison, which is around 14% of GNP. This is not a small sum.

The June, 1989 issue of Atlantic Monthly quoted a former head of procurement of the Pentagon as saying that 1/3 of the military budget was pure waste. Look at his title. And this was before they started their big contracting out push. That 1/3, by way, was more than the deficit that year, that is, the budget would have been balanced had it not existed.

The Seattle newspaper noted that a Marine died in Iraq, due to burns from wearing a T-shirt bought through a Congressional earmark, made of synthetic fiber. Try this simple experiment yourself: go outside, and set a lighter to cloth made of synthetics. Many synthetics will flame right up. And, earmarks bought tens of thousands more of those T-shirts, which the Marines warehouse because they have been ordered not to wear them.

Company: US Government
Country: USA
State: District of Columbia
City: Washington

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