Contractors vs. Government

Editor,
Small-government, free-market ideologues argue that privatizing government services by utilizing contractors (a) saves taxpayers money via competitive bidding, (b) improves efficiency because private enterprise is driven to maximize employee productivity, and (c) defends against fraud because governments are inherently easy to defraud.

But the facts are that non-competitive bidding, cronyism, and rampant, brazen negligence by contractors today cost taxpayers far more and produce far less value than the most lackadaisical government could ever hope to achieve. That government is easy to defraud may be true, but in the case of the Bush administration it is government who are defrauding the citizenry, and these jokers are the masters of that game.