What also happens is that oversight, transparency and auditing of the work is lost. The government just writes checks out to companies like Halliburton, CACI, KBR, Blackwater and a host of other corporations figuring the job is being done correctly and it saves us all lots of money in the long run.
Wrong, carpetbagger breath. The billions paid to companies like I have named above is many times just wasted. Since the federal government no longer has their finger in a specific pie, they also give these companies carte blanche to charge us whatever they want, and workmanship is a dirty little word to these corporations..they just want their check. They create their own work standards without any oversight by the federal government, who is now relegated to just being a “customer”. The contractor can now sub-contract part, if not the entire job, to another contractor with little or no oversight by the federal government or the original company who was given the contract. Where do you think their loyalties lie? The following is a quote from David M. Walker, who as comptroller general of the United States, said this about contractors and their loyalty: “There’s something civil servants have that the private sector doesn’t, and that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good — the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country.”
What is the biggest and scariest part of this whole “contract out the government” scheme is, as the NYT writes, these contractors have slowly become the 4th branch of our federal government.
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Tags: Congressional Oversight, Politics, Federal Contractors, Waxman
