Anybody think it's news that, under the Bush administration, both the number of federal employees and the amount of money spent on private contracts have increased? And that a lot of that money seems to have been wasted? Dollars, Not Sense (full 101-page pdf file; smaller pdf file on highlights here) was released Monday by the Committee on Government Reform Minority Office, but few news outlets have noticed, except the Los Angeles Times, which reports that "the administration's tilt toward doing business with private companies has failed to bring promised savings and has been characterized by 'significant waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.'"
[The] report is described as the first comprehensive assessment of contracting under the Bush administration, which had vowed upon taking office in January 2001 to provide services more efficiently while reducing the size of government.
It reveals an 86% increase in contracts with private businesses, from $203 billion in 2000 to $377.5 billion a year in 2005 -- a growth rate nearly double that of federal spending as a whole.
At the same time, federal payrolls also have grown: The government now has about 1,874,000 civilian employees, up from 1,738,000 five years ago.
The problems include lack of oversight and the increases in cost-plus contracts (under which the government bears the risk of cost overrun), no-bid contracts and monopoly contracts. One of the hooks for the LAT to pay attention was the conviction this week of the administrations's onetime chief procurement officer, David H. Safavian, for making false statements and obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal. The report alleges that parts of $750 billion in contracts (searchable database) are open to question for waste, fraud and/or abuse. The LAT notes:
In 2003, for example, the Border Patrol was found to have paid $20 million for security camera systems that malfunctioned or were never installed. That same year, the Transportation Security Administration awarded Boeing Co. $44 million for installing and maintaining airport luggage screening equipment -- a job that was never evaluated.
In 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency bought $915 million worth of temporary housing and offices for Katrina victims and relief workers. More than a third of them have never been used.
"The lesson of this report is that there's a massive amount of spending, and yet we very clearly aren't spending it smartly," said Peter Singer, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, a centrist public policy center in Washington. "When the overspending is not just in the billions but in the hundreds of billions -- that's worrisome."
(Thanks to TomPaine.com)