By DANA LIEBELSON
Here at POGO, we've spent the last week urging Congress to adopt recommendations from our Bad Business report, which revealed that private contractors cost the government nearly twice as much as federal employees. Last Friday brought the good news that another senator has submitted recommendations to the deficit “Super Committee” that target contracting waste (Senator Tom Coburn, R-OK, offered some recommendations in a report released in July). While it’s still too early to break out the champagne, here’s a look at how these particular recommendations align with POGO’s investigations—and why they could make a real difference in helping the committee reach its trillion-dollar budget reduction goals.
The report is from the minority of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia (Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs) and its Ranking Member, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, aka, the “Super Committee,” has been given the thankless goal of identifying at least $1.5 trillion in budget cuts and submitting legislation to Congress and President Obama by December 2. Of Johnson’s dozens of proposals to the Super Committee, not all of which POGO would support, two specifically target contracting waste and reflect our recommendations.
Sen. Johnson recommends that the contracting workforce be cut by 15 percent, which he says would save $233 billion over the next ten years. He also endorses the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform’s 2011 proposal that recommends that all agencies, including the Department of Defense, be required to provide a specific annual headcount of contractors and the jobs they’re fulfilling.
Johnson seconds the recommendations made by Sen. Coburn—who in turn cites the Fiscal Commission and NYU Professor Paul Light—and they're right up POGO’s alley. A while back, POGO also suggested that the government cut both the Department of Defense (DoD) and non-DoD federal contracting workforce by 15 percent. Even better, POGO has found that this move could save the government even more than Johnson estimates.
"In 2010 the DoD alone spent more than $250 billion on service contractors. So, Senator Johnson's commendable proposal for cutting 15 percent on service contracting government-wide would save taxpayers far more than $233 billion over ten years,” said Ben Freeman, POGO’s national security fellow, citing data from USAspending.gov and the DoD’s office of personnel.
As for part two of Johnson’s recommendation, the Bad Business report found that the federal government does not keep timely and accurate statistics on this workforce. POGO has suggested that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) be required to submit annual reports to Congress detailing how many contractors exist, how much money was spent on these services, which inherently governmental functions are being insourced and how much money the government saves by insourcing services.
Johnson offers another recommendation that flies right into POGO’s ballpark: reforming non-competitive contracts. According to his recommendation, sole-source contracts have jumped significantly in the last decade and “these contracts, which do not allow competition, have repeatedly been shown to produce subpar or even nonfunctional products.”
In the past, POGO has taken a similar stand, writing: “to better evaluate goods and services and to get the best value, the government must encourage genuine competition between contractors…full and open competition should be the rule, rather than the exception.”
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the number of competitive DoD contracts fell to 55 percent in the first two quarters of 2011, a number lower than any point in the last 10 years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. For example, as we note in Bad Business, in the last 20 years, DoD has only subjected 9 percent of contracts for maintenance of weapons systems to a competitive bidding process.
In short, Sen. Johnson’s contracting recommendations are a promising start towards taking the recommendations from Bad Business and preventing billions of dollars in federal waste. We here at POGO encourage you to jump on the bandwagon and tell your own Member of Congress to read our report and make similar recommendations.
Dana Liebelson is POGO's Beth Daley Impact Fellow.
Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore.
As a former Federal civil service employee, while I agree with your report and the recommendations I also believe that there is a gaping hole in the discussion. 1. Out-sourcing purposefully achieved the transfer of civil service jobs to the private sector allowing the White House to claim smaller government while feeding the trough of the big boys -- lobbyists, military-industrial complex. 2. The work being done in these jobs still needs to get done!!! There is no recommendation about bringing these jobs back to the civil service!!! Not a surprise that the report is gaining allies from the right. What thinking has gone into avoiding tying the hands of the Executive Branch agencies to function while decreasing even further available manpower?
Posted by: Debbie | Sep 24, 2011 at 01:27 PM
The sad thing this would have to start right at the top and we wouldn't want to that because if the real truth came out really big heads would roll.
Posted by: Carol | Sep 24, 2011 at 12:57 PM