Money & Politics Reports

Fair Elections – systems with full public financing of elections – would help improve the openness, honesty, and accountability of government.

Companies with immediate past histories of shoddy work and fraudulent practices are being rewarded with billions of dollars in federal contracts. The data suggest that the process by which the federal government currently spends $422 billion per year in taxpayer funds is insufficient to ensure that the American people receive good quality for goods and services purchased for the American people. The rapid increase of federally contracted dollars—100 percent since 2000—makes outsourcing the fastest growing component of discretionary spending. The government’s preference for using outside contractors to provide goods and services makes careful scrutiny of the process and the decisions more important than in the past. At present, loose rules, lack of competition, and limited accountability permit so-called ‘bad actors’ to receive contracts that put taxpayers and our money at risk. For this report, we reviewed hundreds of records and found numerous cases of contractors with questionable performance or responsibility records receiving contracts without competition or sufficient time to determine the extent of the problems identified. While the report outlines specific contractor practices, it is as much an indictment of the flawed contracting process as it is about any single company.