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Obama Puts Brakes on Contractors

Bush's 'market-based' government hasn't been cheaper or better

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 11, 2009 9:20 AM CDT

(Newser) – President Obama slipped an important policy change under the radar last week, saying government needs to make “a real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe, and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich.” Thomas Frank was listening, and he approves. Government-by-contractor—“the GOP’s favorite method of spreading the wealth around”—has been a costly debacle, he writes in the Wall Street Journal.

“For favored contractors and their lobbyists, the Bush years were a boom time like no other,” Frank argues. Bush declared that “government should be market-based,” and actually graded agencies on how much work they could outsource. Contractors were supposed to be cheaper and better; they were neither. Fraud and abuse sprung up like weeds. Now, Obama is drafting new rules for when contracting is appropriate. “‘Always’ is no longer an acceptable answer.”

[Images (4)]

[Quotes (1)]

Notorious contractor Blackwater has renamed itself "Xe," perhaps hoping their media critics 'confuse them with the symbol for the element xenon,' Thomas Frank postulates. (AP Photo/Gervasio Sanchez)

Chart shows number of voluntary reports of internal fraud and abuse by government contractors.

Attorney Susan Burke, lead attorney for four former Abu Ghraib detainees, poses with details of a complaint alleging they were tortured by US defense contractors. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole)

President Barack Obama speaks about education at the 19th Annual Legislative Conference of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Tuesday, March 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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These days it doesn't even look like banks can be "market-based," much less government.
- Thomas Frank

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COMMENTS

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Showing 2 of 2 comments

Forderon

Mar 11, 2009 2:59 AM CDT

While "fiscally unconservative" cons hypocritically make a big deal about $7B in earmarks that they also included in the omnibus bill, they said nothing when Bush was giving away hundreds of billions of dollars in no-bid defense contracts. Now tell me how that makes any sense.

Observer

Mar 10, 2009 9:40 PM CDT

Three cheers for Obama's realism. And please prosecute the contractor criminals that have been robbing us the past 8 years. After prosecuting the criminal government officials that allowed the plunder.

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Bush administration • Barack Obama • outsourcing • government contracts • Obama administration • budget reform • defense contractors

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Obama Puts Brakes on Contractors