Private Contractors Cost The Government More - Not Less

It has been a mantra of the Republican Party for decades now that private contractors can do the business of government cheaper and more efficiently. This has led to the federal government contracting out work to private companies for everything from computer services and human resources to war and prison services. That sounds great on the surface. The only problem is that it just hasn't worked out that way.

A non-profit Washington-based group, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), did a study on the private contracting of government services and found that it is almost always more expensive -- and usually as much as twice as expensive. Out of the 35 programs they studied, at least 33 of them cost the government more money than if the work had been done by federal employees.

For example, the government was billed by a private contractor $268,653 for computer engineering services. Government employees (at current salary and benefits) could have done the same work for $136,456. A human resources private contract cost the government $228,488, while government workers could have performed the same services for only $111,711.

POGO general counsel Scott Amey said, "That's a big difference. We compared the full compensation paid to federal government and private sector employees to the billable rates in federal service contracts. Across the board you see that it cost government more to pay for contractors."

Frankly, this doesn't come as any surprise to me. Most of the private contractors aren't interested in actually saving the government any money. They see the contracts as a way to make exorbitant profits on their services -- profits they could never get away with in the private sector.

But their Republican lackeys keep feeding them these contracts -- just look at the billions of dollars made by numerous companies off the two unnecessary wars we are fighting (contracts that have little or no oversight). And the Republicans will continue to do this as long as they can, because they get a hefty chunk of it back to fill their campaign chests (which should be considered as kickbacks, which is what they really are).

The Republicans would like for Americans to think the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, and children are draining our government coffers. In truth, it's the corporations -- the same corporations who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes.