Do Contractors Protest Too Much?

[unhappycamper]

Do Contractors Protest Too Much?
May 24, 2008
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Quit complaining. That's the message from the Pentagon and Congress to defense companies that cry foul when they don't win contracts.

Resolving the protests costs the government time and money. That means it can take longer to build needed combat gear or buy critical supplies, making U.S. troops and American taxpayers the real losers.

Far more often than not, the complainers don't win anyway, according to statistics from the Government Accountability Office.

Military spending has increased dramatically since 2001, and so have the challenges to procurement decisions made by the Defense Department.

It's become a big enough problem that the House Armed Services Committee has raised the possibility of fining companies that submit "frivolous or improper" protests to the GAO. Complaining has become too reflexive, the committee says in a May 16 report, and it wants to discourage contractors from lodging protests as a "stalling or punitive tactic."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/do-contractors-protest-too-much.html



uhc comment: I think Clinton's last military budget was $301,000,000,000 or so; the 2009 military budget is $735,700,000,000 or so. Yea, I would say military spending has increased dramatically since 2001.

[MrModerate]

1. Frivolous and improper protests should be rejected . . .

But let's be real -- the government procurement process has become increasingly opaque and untrustworthy over the last 7+ years. Not all protests are unjustified, and procurement officials doing the bidding of the Bush White House and the Rumsfeld/Gates Pentagon have gone to jail.