ILSM on Hillary Clinton and Military Contractors

This one is by ILSM…

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Hillary Clinton has stated she would cut spending for contractor support for DoD by 50%. I tried to find her exact statement and instead found some testimony concerning waste and abuse in Army contracts in Iraq.

She seems to have figured it out from the following exchange that took place on 19 Apr 2007; Senator Clinton to Assistant Sec Army Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Claude Bolton (Pentagon insider, retired AF general, who “survived the C-17 scandals of 1989):

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Clinton: Here are a few excerpts from some of the DoD documents from July 2005:

There were concerns as to “the contractors’ reluctance to down-size the labor force after the transfer or support missions to the sustainment contractor.” Also, July 2005, “The use of self-directed work added additional cost to the task order with no visible benefit to the government. ” March 2006, “There was no effort to coordinate with the contracting officer to de-scope changes based on the reduction requirements and to establish a new definite price.” April 2006, “Command personnel advised us that the contractor wouldn’t move idle personnel or equipment assigned from one task order to another task order to accomplish needed work. When we brought this situation to the attention of top contractor operational personnel, they informed us this was a company policy.”

Senator Clinton asks some questions excerpts from Mr Bolton’s answers:

Bolton: One (Army chartered committee) is to look at requirements. These are requirements that come on a regular basis from the commanders to make sure that the commander is getting what he or she really wants. Sometimes those requirements are inflated.

Ilsm here: Interesting that commanders make requirements for idle labor, the congress has required service contracts be performance based, that is let the private sector determine the cost effective approach, not create a featherbedding scam in the area of responsibility.

Back to the document…

Bolton: And many times those bids are a lot larger and higher than we’d like them to be, so we put people in place to correct some of the things that you’ve just mentioned.

Ilsm again: Here is where Bunny Greenhouse tried to stop one example of many, the 5 year no competition contract to Kellogg Brown Root (Halliburton). The performance was so necessary, they had no idea what was needed, but that they had to rush into 5 years of this kind of waste and abuse. Competition is the only way for the offerors to provide lean offers, removing competition left the Army and taxpayer holding the bag with no performance and continuing cost accumulation.

The answer to the company not moving idle labor hours being charged for nothing over to “real” work was ‘company policy’.

All the waste of US civil servants with overhead, general and administrative costs, good old boy (revolving door) management and profits.

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This one was by ILSM.