Today, the nine Democratic freshman Senators sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin requesting a vote on Senate Amendment No. 2999-an amendment to establish an independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting. In the letter, the Senators write: "This amendment helps fulfill the promise of a Democratic Senate to return more vigorous oversight and accountability to the federal government."The Webb-McCaskill amendment to establish a Commission on Wartime Contracting was re-filed Thursday by Senators Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill on behalf of the freshman Democratic senators. Modeled after the "Truman Committee" which conducted hundreds of hearings and investigations into government waste during WWII, the Commission would significantly increase transparency and accountability and generate important solutions for systematic contracting problems.
The amendment is all the more timely in light of the alleged contractor abuses which recently occurred in Iraq. "The time to restore accountability and fix systemic deficiencies in inter-agency wartime contracting is long overdue," the Senators write. "Recent events underscore the urgency of our initiative."The measure has attracted the support of 26 co-sponsors. It also has the backing of taxpayer watchdog groups including: the Project on Government Oversight, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Government Accountability Project, OMBWatch, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
For a copy of the amendment, visit: http://webb.senate.g...
In one example, they were building B-29s, but the wings weren't long enough. Truman told them to change it, the contractor said "nope, I have a contract."
As President Truman said "the son-of-a-bitch cared more about the contract than the fact that kids were dying."
We would do well to remember that story today.
I've been in government contract work for a long time. I've even written a winning proposal. Mostly I've been a fly on the wall watching what is going on. The idea that there is a free market in government contracting is something viewed through an ideological prism. The only government procurement that approaches free market conditions is the buying of fuel.
I worked for several years at Navy Shipyards and gained an appreciation for the way they are managed and financed. These are large government owned industrial facilities that do not get an annual appropriation. They have a capital fund and receive payment for the work they perform from money appropriated to the Navy for ship repair. The management and personnel of these facilities are keenly aware that they are competing for the Navy's business. These are not places for political patronage and jobs for the boys. The capital fund permits investment in anticipation of future work. That investment includes improvement to management and work practices that improves efficiency. Not included is an incentive to reward successful marketing of services or to reward stockholders. The managers are government employees and the stockholders are tax payers. The incentive to compete is to keep the shipyard open and the people who work there employed, not to enrich a small number of investors and sharp marketers.
The only difference between the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, a whole owned subsidiary of the Federal Government, and the Newport News Shipyard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, is who owns the facility. Both have one and only one customer. This is not a necessarily bad arrangement except for who profits from the facility, Northrop management and stockholders, versus we who pay taxes.
I propose that the government buy a percentage of the shares in private corporations equivalent to the percentage of their revenue from government contracts. That means that the Commonwealth of Virginia do the same.
One of the unintended consequences of the current method of doing business is that private corporations do not invest for the long term in anticipation of future government work as they can never know what government work will follow the current contracts. Note that the government owned shipyards have the incentive to invest in anticipation of future work. A good example of a similar relationship between a government agency and a private company is the Department of the Treasury's relationship with it's supplier of paper.
http://www.gao.gov/n...
The government can not figure out how this company, who has had this contract for over 150 years, makes a profit.
Certainty that there will be future work is an incentive to invest in the future. Competition between separate teams as between NNSY and Newport News provides incentives to work better and faster. Ownership is important as money is not necessarily a good incentive or why is there a need for the Webb-McCaskill amendment? When Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin compete for the next generation combat aircraft, is this based on price only? The competition is between two engineering teams each with unique design and manufacturing ideas. Price is important, but the capability of the aircraft is paramount. You do not need two private companies to have two or more engineering teams competing. Who is financing and who will profit from the success of these teams is irrelevant. The Soviets had more than one aircraft design bureau and they sure competed for business from the Ministry of Defense. The Soviet Union did not die because they had poorly designed combat aircraft.
The whole system of government contracting that provides incentives to loot the treasury should be changed. If those who profit are the tax payers, less incentive to loot will be provided. If the government owned a significant portion of the businesses that work for the government then the movement of people between government contracting companies and government agencies will become a positive rather than a negative. Under the current system, someone wishing to advance his career will move from government to contractor to access the bonuses for bringing in new business. When the government owns the business the incentive is to encourage cross pollination to improve the relationship and capabilities of both sides of the relationship.
It is not government ownership that creates a socialist state, it is a mindset that a small number of elite individuals are uniquely suited to the job of management. This is little different from the radical Libertarian view from Ayn Rand. Let us stop looking through ideological prisms and start using logic and evidence when deciding public policy.