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A group of defense contractors have begun a major lobbying effort to prevent cuts in military spending. Their campaign, titled “Second to None,” emphasizes jobs while conjuring images of American exceptionalism through public ads. The effort led by Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and other defense firms, comes on the heels of a report released earlier in the month by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. That commission comprising 8 bipartisan current and former officials, found at least $31 billion of waste and fraud in private contracts during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 240-page report found an “over-reliance” on defense contracting. Now, a new report bolsters the notion that outsourcing work to contractors actually wastes government money. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on September 13th, released a report, titled “Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors,” which examined 35 occupational classifications and compared the amount of money that the government pays contractors for tasks government workers could perform. It found, among other things, that private contractors are paid 1.83 times more than federal employees for the same task. Additionally, billing rates were 15% higher for work performed at contractor sites versus government sites, federal employees were cheaper than contractors, and the government was charged higher rates for the same tasks than other employers. POGO’s study was limited to one department, the General Services Administration, because that was the only one with publicly available information on salary and benefits. This study is especially significant in the current economic climate as approximately one-quarter of all discretionary spending now goes to service contractors –$320 billion dollar a year. POGO’s stated goal was to “get people to end the typically misleading and inaccurate comparisons that look at public vs. private sector compensation – and focus instead on what the government is actually paying when it outsources work.”

GUEST: Scott Amey, General Counsel with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO)

Read the POGO Report here: http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/contract-oversight/bad-business/co-gp-20110913.html