Privatize, Privatize!

Government under the GOP has become “of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.” The outsourcing of government responsibilities under this administration has “surged.” The corporatists are in charge and they are shameless.

From the NYT’s today:

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

Furthermore, the article says:

The contracting surge has raised bipartisan alarms. A just-completed study by experts appointed by the White House and Congress, the Acquisition Advisory Panel, found that the trend “poses a threat to the government’s long-term ability to perform its mission” and could “undermine the integrity of the government’s decision making.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, added the word “oversight” to signal his intentions, begins a series of investigative hearings on Tuesday focusing on contracts in Iraq and at the Department of Homeland Security.

“Billions of dollars are being squandered, and the taxpayer is being taken to the cleaners,” said Mr. Waxman, who got an “F” rating last year from the Contract Services Association, an industry coalition. The chairman he succeeded, Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, earned an “A.”

David M. Walker, who as comptroller general of the United States leads the Government Accountability Office, has urged Congress to take a hard look at the proper limits of contracting. Mr. Walker has not taken a stand against contractors — his agency is also dependent on them, he admits — but he says they often fail to deliver the promised efficiency and savings. Private companies cannot be expected to look out for taxpayers’ interests, he said.

“There’s something civil servants have that the private sector doesn’t,” Mr. Walker said in an interview. “And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good — the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country.”

So, there you have it folks, Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” is being dismantled by the Corporatist Bushies one contract at a time. Read the whole article and you will see just who is profiting from this corporate takeover. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t the “American People and Taxpayers.”

Horrifying!