Details about this story

• Source: New York Times
• Date: February 04, 2007
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Ron Nixon , Scott Shane
• Topics: Federal Government
• Data Types: Federal Data
• Description/Excerpt: Competition, intended to produce savings, appears to have sharply eroded. An analysis by The New York Times shows that fewer than half of all "contract actions" - new contracts and payments against existing contracts - are now subject to full and open competition. Just 48 percent were competitive in 2005, down from 79 percent in 2001. The most secret and politically delicate government jobs, like intelligence collection and budget preparation, are increasingly contracted out, despite regulations forbidding the outsourcing of "inherently governmental" work. Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said allowing CACI workers to review other contractors captured in microcosm "a government that's run by corporations." 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.