June 27, 2007

Waste in Federal Contracts Now More Than $1 Trillion

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Last year California Rep. Henry Waxman released an in-depth report on government-contract spending under the Bush Administration. It found that:

  • Between 2000 and 2005, federal procurement spending rose by over 80%.
  • No-bid and other contracts awarded without full and open competition increased by more than 100%.
  • Contract mismanagement led to rising waste, fraud, and abuse in federal contracting.
    •

    Today Waxman released this year’s analysis, which shows that what was already bad has actually gotten much worse.

  • For the first time EVER the federal government has passed $400 billion threshold in contracts for the year.
  • More than half of this spending — more than $200 billion in new contracts — was awarded without full and open competition.
  • The total value of wasteful federal contracts now exceeds $1 trillion.
    •

    Get the full rundown, and have a look at specific contracts, here.

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    WE'LL BE BLUNT

    It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

    The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

    Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

    The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

    Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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