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Biggest defense contractors heavy lobby influence in washington Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778250694http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778250694
Pentagon cut down on bids
Biggest defense contractors are also major political players, a new report finds
From Wire Reports Sep 30, 2004
WASHINGTON About two-thirds of the $900 billion in Pentagon contract grants over the past six years were awarded without full and open competitive bidding, a private watchdog group reported yesterday.
The Center for Public Integrity found that a majority of Defense Department contracts were awarded either to single bidders on a sole-source basis or to a contractor that had prevailed over a set of competitors limited by government regulations.
The report outlined the flow of money between the Pentagon and powerful defense contractors and the channeling of cash from those companies into the campaign coffers of politicians.
The extensive study confirms anew the conventional wisdom that the so-called iron triangle the linkage between politicians, the Defense Department and defense industry that President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned against 44 years ago is thriving.
Using a team of 23 researchers over nine months, the center homed in on the Pentagon's publicly available procurement databases, examining 2.2 million contract actions totaling $900 billion worth of defense spending in fiscal years 1998-2003. The group, which is nonpartisan and not- for-profit, then cross-referenced the data with other federal databases that tally campaign contributions and spending for hired lobbyists.
"We found, not surprisingly, that the biggest defense contractors are also major political players, spending millions of dollars to grease the skids in Washington," Charles Lewis, the group's executive director, told a news conference.
The 10 biggest defense contractors, the report found, made campaign contributions totaling $35.7 million to federal candidates in the period under study. Because federal law bars direct corporate contributions to federal candidates, the money came from political action committees linked to the companies, so-called soft money corporate donations to political parties, and individual contributions from company executives, employees and family members. The same companies also spent $414 million to lobby lawmakers and executive-branch officials over the same period, according to the center.
Pentagon contracting has become an issue in the presidential election because of Halliburton, a Houston-based energy and construction company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Democrat John Kerry has said the Bush administration showed favoritism in giving Halliburton noncompetitive contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Cheney has denied any involvement in the Halliburton contract decisions.
Halliburton has won more than $7 billion in Iraq contract work that involves oil-field restoration work, as well as feeding and housing U.S. troops. The study found that of the $4.3 billion in all types of defense contracts that Halliburton was awarded in the 2003 budget year, only about a half were based on competitive bidding.
The study did not examine the propriety of those awards.
The report found that Pentagon records designated only 40 percent of Defense Department contracts during the six years as resulting from "full and open competition." But even that figure overstated the competition. It dropped to 36 percent of all Pentagon contracts after deducting the competitive contracts that drew only a single bidder.
About 44 percent of contracts were given under "other than full and open competition" usually as sole-source contracts. An additional 7 percent fell under other categories (most often as small business set-asides), and 8 percent gave no competition information at all, the study found. The total comes to only 99 percent because of rounding.
A message left with a Pentagon spokesman yesterday was not immediately returned.
Originally designed to allow the government to buy commodities such as paper and pens without seeking bids, the federal schedule maintained by the General Services Administration is a catalogue or price list from approved suppliers who went through a competition at some point to demonstrate the government was getting a good price.
Government officials can buy from one company off this schedule without seeking bids. But the study found that this process designed for goods has grown to encompass services such as guards, dentists, translators, interrogators and even contractors to evaluate contract bids. The study said it was much harder to evaluate in advance what would be the best price for such services.
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