{"id":179671,"date":"2017-12-01T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-02T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/01\/the-joys-of-hyperlinks\/"},"modified":"2017-12-01T20:03:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-02T01:03:00","slug":"the-joys-of-hyperlinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/12\/01\/the-joys-of-hyperlinks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Hyperlinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a rather alarming article about the contractor looting that is the F-35 program<\/a>, POGO revealed a little gem:<\/p>\n

Military officials like to say that contractors actually cut costs and take care of the support functions, allowing the troops to focus on winning the war. Whether or not a contractor really \u201cfrees a Marine to fight\u201d is debatable. Using contractors does provide a convenient means by which Administrations can mask the size of our military commitments to these places by adhering to caps on the official numbers of troops deployed in the strict sense of the actual number of uniformed military personnel deployed. These force caps rarely include contractor personnel. And contractors are hardly more economical. A 2011 Project On Government Oversight study found contractors can cost the government more than twice the amount<\/a> (PDF)<\/span> of an equivalent government employee.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Following the above link down the rabbit hole gets us to this:<\/p>\n

Based on the current public debate regarding the salary comparisons of federal and private sector employees, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO)1 decided to take on the task of doing what others have not\u2014comparing total annual compensation for federal and private sector employees with federal contractor billing rates in order to determine whether the current costs of federal service contracting serves the public interest. <\/span>

<\/span>The current debate over pay differentials largely relies on the theory that the government pays private sector compensation rates when it outsources services. This report proves otherwise: in fact, it shows that the government actually pays service contractors at rates far exceeding the cost of employing federal employees to perform comparable functions. <\/span>

<\/span>POGO’s study analyzed the total compensation paid to federal and private sector employees, and am-1ml billing rates for contractor employees across 35 occupational classifications covering over 550 service activities. Our findings were shocking\u2014POGO estimates the government pays billions more annually in taxpayer dollars to hire contractors than it would to hire federal employees to perform comparable services. Specifically, POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates\u2014deemed fair and reasonable\u2014that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services. <\/span>

<\/span>Additional key findings include: <\/span><\/p>\n