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Pentagon Reportedly Buried Study Exposing $125B in Waste

• wahern 10y ago
  Among its other findings, the report showed that the Defense Department was paying just over 1 million contractors, civilian employees and uniformed personnel to fill back office jobs. That number nearly matches the amount of active-duty troops -- 1.3 million, the lowest since 1940. Relying on contract workers (effectively, out-sourcing) is how Congress and the President have been able to grow discretionary spending for 50 years while being able to claim that they aren't growing the size of the federal government. The number of government employees literally hasn't changed since the 1960s. Here's the data: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ The game of hiding the size of government by out-sourcing has been going on for decades. That's nothing new, and it's as close to a long-term government conspiracy as you could possibly get at that scale. (Not that it is a "conspiracy". It's just obviously intentional, systematic, and incredibly long-lived; and one of its functions is to deceive, or at least provide plausible deniability during election cycles.) In fact, it's such an old game it makes me question whether any report was actually wrongly suppressed. Congressional politicians, not the military, are the ones mandating the out-sourcing. And the Congressional budget committees would be well aware of how much money was being spent on contract work.