contracting out, machines, and limited government
They are being taken for a ride.
The argument for contracting out is that jobs are done better when they are awarded competitively. There is lots of truth to this, and if this were all that was at stake, the case for contracting out would be powerful indeed. But there is another dimension as well.
As government employment grew, particularly under the New Deal, Congress required civil service status for the new employees. The reasons were complex, but one important purpose was to prevent the rise of a national political machine. Political machines in American cities used control over taxpayer financed jobs to get cheap campaign workers, who could be relied on the get out the vote for the boss in order to keep their jobs. City machines were corrupt and violent, but limited in their arbitrariness by their being subordinated to the Constitution and courts they did not control. Even so, one community college student of mine some years ago, while a high school student in Chicago, reprted the machine there hired him to break house and car windows of political opponents.
A national machine would not face either of these legal constraints, so the possibility of one being formed is very worrisome. Windows would not be all that are at stake.
The Bush administration is contracting out jobs, removing them from the civil service and shifting them to the corporate world. The companies getting these jobs know that the re-election of Bush will help them keep these lucrative goodies, and it is no surprise that campaign contributions to Bushg dwarf those to earlier republican preisdents. Part of the purpose of Civil dervice has been undermined.
From a classical liberal and libertarian perspective the rhetoric of contracting out has been empoyed to adopt a strategy that DEPENDS on big government. the bigger the governent, the more contarcting out that can be done, and the greater the camapaign contributions that follow.
How do I know that my interpretation makes more sense than the usual classical liberal/conservative one favoring limited governent? The best evidence beside the size of the campaign contributions flowing to Bush and the zooming level of spending are first, that many of the contracts are cost plus and no bid, so the market oriented logic of contracting out is undermined, and second, that even companies that have ripped off the government (meaning us) in the past are still getting these contracts, such as Halliburton.
No libertarian or classical liberal in his or her right mind would vote Republican in the next election.