An American Lion

Kitty holds down a contractor job catching mice for The Man

Thank you for noticing that the United States government has a contractor fetish and a contractor addiction so bad they’re going to have to create a reality show about it, and soon:

In 2009, contractors accounted for 48 percent of the Defense Department’s workforce in Iraq and 57 percent in Afghanistan, according to the Congressional Research Service. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) use them extensively as well. Compare that with the height of the Vietnam War, when contractors accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. presence on the ground; today, contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan outnumber American men and women in uniform.

In addition to providing security, contractors feed, clothe, and house U.S. troops; they train army and police units, spearhead development projects, and even oversee other contractors and subcontractors. Without contractors, the United States would undoubtedly need a draft to ramp up its troop presence in Afghanistan.

Waging war through contractors also means a lot of waste. Money must change hands multiple times in a foreign country — a standing invitation for corruption. The contracting apparatus spawns a web of complex financial transactions that the U.S. Congress cannot effectively oversee. Funding it is equally problematic; Washington continues to finance the struggle against terrorism through supplemental appropriations as though they were emergency operations. As the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction(SIGIR) has painstakingly documented, throwing taxpayer money at a problem in this fashion has led to astonishing waste, fraud, and abuse. Unless something changes, Afghanistan will be no different.

But perhaps most alarmingly, Washington’s addiction to outsourcing has rendered much of its war-fighting wholly opaque. Despite having spearheaded the Federal Funding Transparency and Accountability Act (FFATA) as a senator, Obama is now leading a war in Afghanistan whose funding is effectively a black hole. The website USAspending.gov, created by FFATA, provided data for the analysis below. Yet information on subcontracts, the vehicle for operationalizing most contractor spending, was supposed to be made available to the public by January 2009. Nearly a year later, it remains shrouded in secrecy (the site is still “under development”).

Contractors are good Americans, serving their country. Let’s get that out of the way up front. I don’t automatically buy the “mercenary” argument. Many contractors have to maintain a high level of loyalty to the United States in order to maintain security clearances. Where we go off the rails is on the structure of contractor agreements.

Where, for example, is the incentive to cut costs and save money? There is none. Where is the incentive to reward a contractor who eliminates their own job if they discover what they’re doing isn’t necessary? There is none. Why not? Why not reward the contractors with incentives for saving the government money? Why not make it a condition of their employment to justify their own existence and then receive commensurate work or employment if they can help realign what they do?

Where is the cap on what a contractor can make above their government counterpart? I think we need to reward quality and give people incentives. I don’t think a contractor doing the same work as a government worker should make more than 35% more in salary. Many times, the contractor makes twice or more what the government worker—in some cases, the member of the U.S. military—they are working alongside.

Any company that engages in fraudulent practices loses ALL of their contracts. This shouldn’t a nitpicky thing—an egregious violation triggers forfeiture. And then pays back the money they made that fiscal year. And has to eat their cost to do so. That’s an incentive to do the right thing, don’t you think?

I don’t expect a miracle here. The companies that get contracts pay the politicians to look the other way. They used to call it bribery, but now, they call it making a campaign contribution in order to keep the status quo in place.