Contractors: Corporate Welfare on Steroids

[unlawflcombatnt]

The amount of taxpayers' money going into the pockets of private contractors has simply exploded under the Bush Corporatocracy. In 2000, taxpayers paid federal contractors $207 billion dollars. Thanks to Bush's "No-Contractor-Left-Behind" policy, $400 billion of Corporate Welfare was going into contractors' pockets annually as of 2005. The situation has gotten so bad that the Government Services Administration hired, ironically, another private contractor to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors.

More ironic still is that the agency hired for this, CACI International, was recently under investigation itself for contracting misconduct. (CACI was a contractor for interrogators at Abu Ghraib.)

Free market competition for these contracts has greatly decreased under the Corporatist, anti-free market Bush regime. In 2001, 79% of federal contracts were open to competitive bidding. By 2005, Bush had reduced that number to 48%.

The New York Times writes: The most successful contractors are not necessarily those doing the best work, but those who have mastered the special skill of selling to Uncle Sam....

And how do they "sell to uncle Sam"? Again, from the New York Times: The top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns. “We’ve created huge behemoths that are doing 90 or 95 percent of their business with the government,” said Peter W. Singer, who wrote a book on military outsourcing. “They’re not really companies, they’re quasi agencies.” Indeed, the biggest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin, which has spent $53 million on lobbying and $6 million on donations since 2000, gets more federal money each year than the Departments of Justice or Energy.

Unlike Federal agencies, contractors are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Thus contractors are under no legal obligation to open their books or reveal their activities to the public. Thus they can easily embezzle money and defraud taxpayers without ever having to show where the money went.

With the takeover of Congress by the Democrats, the leadership of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform changed from its previously poor leadership under Republican Tom Davis to Democrat Henry Waxman of California.

Waxman goes on to state: "Billions of dollars are being squandered, and the taxpayer is being taken to the cleaners." As evidence of the change to come, last year Waxman received a grade of "F" from the Contract Services Association, a government contractor lobbying group. In contrast, outgoing Republican Tom Davis received an "A" grade from the contractor lobby.

Even U.S. Comptroller General David Walker expressed some misgivings about government contractors. He acknowledges that private companies can't be expected to look out for the taxpayers'. (Especially when it cuts into their profits.)

Again, from the NYT, Walker goes on to state: ""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....""

Measured in dollars, the amount of Corporate Welfare going to contractors has doubled under Bush. And this still doesn't include his latest giveaways, such as the Medicare Prescription-Pharmaceutical Company Welfare Bill, with an annual price tag of over $70 billion.

As usual, the Bush Hypocri-ship talks out of both sides of its mouth on "smaller government," "free markets" and "entrepreneurship." Under Bush "free markets" means freedom from competition on government contracts, and freedom from paying the market rate for labor, both by importing cheap foreign labor and exporting jobs to cheap foreign labor markets. To Bush, "freedom" means the ability to deprive anyone of their own freedom, if it interferes with Corporate America's ability to profiteer.

Under Bush we've become an unabashed Welfare State.

A Corporate Welfare State, that is.

unlawflcombatnt

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[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The whole economy would collapse if the contacts ceased.

Subtract all the business that is paid for directly or indirectly by the government & what do have left?

[alstephenson]

2. Disgusting and unacceptable!!!

Go, Waxman!

[unlawflcombatnt]

3. Hooray for Waxman

He's got a lot of these slimeball contractors shaking in their boots.

[unlawflcombatnt]

4. More Contractors Indicted

A Yahoo News article today reveals that 3 Army Reserve Officers and U.S. contractor were indicted for bid-rigging scams in Iraq. The husband of 1 of the Army Officers was also charged for involvement in the scam. The contractor involved with this bid-rigging scam was Seymour Morris. This follows the sentencing last week of a former Pentagon contractor to 9 years for steering millions of Iraq rebuilding money to American businessman Philip Bloom, who has already pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. In the last 2 weeks, at least 6 Americans involved in contracting fraud have been either charged, indicted, or convicted.

The full article, by Lara Jake Jones of AP, can be found at
"5 Indicted in Iraq Contract Scam". Below are excerpts from the article.

"Officials indict 5 in Iraq contract scam

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Three Army Reserve officers and a U.S. contractor were indicted Wednesday as part of a bid-rigging scam that steered millions of dollars of Iraq reconstruction projects to a contractor in exchange for cash, luxury cars, jewelry and other pricey goods.

The scam was outlined in a 25-count indictment filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey.

The three U.S. Army Reserve officers were responsible for helping to supervise how the U.S.-managed Coalition Provisional Authority spent an estimated $26 billion available for reconstruction projects in Iraq. They were in those posts in 2003 and 2004.

The indictment says the three officers — Col. Curtis G. Whiteford of Utah, Lt. Col. Debra M. Harrison of New Jersey and Lt. Col. Michael B. Wheeler of Wisconsin — directed at least $8 million to a construction and services company. In return, they allegedly demanded cash, a Nissan sports car, a Cadillac SUV, real estate, a Breitling watch, business-class plane tickets and other items...."

[PsycheCC]

5. Great post! K&R. This administration has been all about putting

public tax dollars in the private hands of their cronies. The numbers you site are pretty alarming. Thanks for digging up the details, as usual.

[liberalla]

6. Corporate Orgy

Corporate Orgy... in the blood of our soldiers.

That's what Randi Rhodes called it today.

KICK! :kick:

[unlawflcombatnt]

7. Exactly

I didn't hear Randi today, but she's right on with that statement. Corporate profiteering paid for with the blood of our soldiers.

[liberalla]

8. and now the soldiers are training their own killers

omg. how did things get so screwed up!?!? :banghead:

(i know, i know... but the enormity and sheer ruthlessness of it all still shocks and amazes me)

Thanks for this thread.

[unlawflcombatnt]

10. Training our own killers

It's really amazing to realize we're training and equipping both sides in a civil war, especially when both sides are trying to kill Americans.

Bush's only goal is to perpetuate war in the Middle East as long as possible, so as much Corporate Welfare can be sucked out of U.S. taxpayers as possible. For Bush it would be ideal if the war continued beyond his presidency, so he could share in the war profiteering when he leaves office. Then he would not only be a "war-time" president, but a rich ex-president to boot.

What a land of opportunity, where anyone can grow up to be a war profiteer. And where anyone, no matter how stupid, dishonest, incompetent, or corrupt they are, can become President of the United States.

unlawflcombatnt

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[PsycheCC]

9. Interesting that Bush's latest budget includes cuts to Medicare despite the

heavy costs you site of the drug bill:

Measured in dollars, the amount of Corporate Welfare going to contractors has doubled under Bush. And this still doesn't include his latest giveaways, such as the Medicare Prescription-Pharmaceutical Company Welfare Bill, with an annual price tag of over $70 billion.

He is clearly shifting health care spending away from providers toward big pharma. I'm sure this shift benefits him and his kind, but I wonder exactly how. Any ideas?

[unlawflcombatnt]

12. Pharma vs. Doctors

I'm sure Bush has lots of friends in the Pharmaceutical industry. Donald Rumsfeld apparently owns stock in the company manufacturing the antiviral drug recommended for bird flu.

As for the shift towards Pharma, and away from MD's, the scheduled reductions in Medicare reimbursements to physicians will be 10% in 2008, unless something is changed. A 10% cut in pay certainly isn't winning Bush any friends among physicians. Unless they alsohappen to be CEOs or large shareholders at Pharmaceutical companies.

[kineneb]

11. but what happens when the golden-egg goose up and dies?

If the Corps suck the Treasury dry, what then? The US has no manufacturing base left to fall back upon. Hardly anything is made here anymore. We can't all serve hamburgers to each other. I realize the corporate mindset is all short term, but don't they realize that it will eventually backfire on them?

There are not enough law enforcement officers/military to enforce martial law. There are not enough prisons to lock up all the poor. So what will happen? I sense uglyness coming, but I don't know in what form it will appear.

[unlawflcombatnt]

13. Excellent Question

"If the Corps suck the Treasury dry, what then? The US has no manufacturing base left to fall back upon. Hardly anything is made here anymore. We can't all serve hamburgers to each other. I realize the corporate mindset is all short term, but don't they realize that it will eventually backfire on them?"

That's a perfect summary of the predicament we're in. Corporations cut employment to maintain short-term profit margins, with full realization that this is to their own long-term detriment.
But, as you've stated, it's all about the "short-term," without a thought to the longer-term disaster that's brewing.

As someone else stated at another forum, Corporate America is at the "pillaging stage." They're trying pick the carcass clean before there's nothing left to take.

"I sense uglyness coming, but I don't know in what form it will appear."

I agree. It won't be pretty when it arrives.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

14. Yeah, another thing making me sick about Iraq

The amount of fraud and corruption in Iraq breaks almost all other precedents for a foreign campaign, both among those in the Iraqi government and among the coalition. As you say, Bush has used Iraq as an excuse to financially reward his cronies with lavish corporate welfare as has rarely been seen before in the United States.

Even more galling, it's US taxpayer money that Bush is using for the wealth distribution-- and even more galling, it's wealth that the US doesn't even have. We're borrowing it from China, and when the bills come due in 10-15 years as the T-bills sunset, it won't be these corrupt beneficiaries of the Bush war profiteering who pay it back, it'll be us, to the tune of $300,000 per household! :banghead:

Arrgh. No wonder so many of my friends are emigrating from the States to places like Italy or France or Germany, or moving and getting set up in Chile or Uruguay-- they're getting out while they can, while the rest of us still in the USA, i.e. "suckers," will be left holding the bill.

[unlawflcombatnt]

15. Congressional Investigations

It was heartening to watch the oversight hearings today (pre-recorded) on Iraq contracting. KBR & Blackwater were grilled by Congressional questioners, including Henry Waxman, Dennis Kucinich, and even Republican Christopher Shays.

From what I saw, it appears there really is going to be some Congressional oversight, and some of the crooked contractors probably will be prosecuted. The tone was altogether different than it was under the phony oversight conducted under Republican leadership.

unlawflcombatnt

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