Bush Outsourcing Government Jobs

I believe Medicare is run efficiently. More efficiently than the HMO's and PPO's. The health insurance the politicians and seniors get. It's run pretty well.

And just because most government agencies have been run poorly, doesn't mean that has to be the way it is. Or, you don't take a government run thing and outsource it if it means it's going to cost us more money.

But if you are not defending Bush or what he did, then I agree with your premise. But he used your premise to get away with fleecing the treasury.

And I'm all for outsourcing things that make sense. Unfortunately, for the past 8 years, Bush has been outsourcing things to his buddies, and charging us a premium. It didn't save us money and in some cases, they had corporations making decisions that should have been left up to government officials. But since those officials were just Bushies, I guess it didn't matter that Corporations were making government decisions.

What you have said is all true and you make good points. Let's hope Obama outsources the right things and doesn't outsource things that are better left to the government.

Did you listen/read the story I provided at the beginning of this thread?


Yes I did actually, and it was a interesting story thank you sealy, but my point all along here as it has been in the frist posting was that there are some things the Federal Govt. just is simply bad at doing and that is true when it comes to the civilian service or delivering service to people in general. I do agree that the system need to be reformed and in such a way as to allow it not to become this giant money source for friends of whatever party happens to be in power but more a bidding process issue that makes it fair and open, where not only the best bid wins but the most qualified. There are also issues involved in come cases like the US Military as I mentioned before where IMHO there has been too much outsourcing and it needs to be reviewed but that the limited personnel make it difficult without adding additional rotations to existing guard units or instituting a draft which again would in my opnion decrease the fighting ability of the Military. On the Medicare issue sealy, did you know that most of that is now outsourced? Did you further know , that when a Senior or someone that calls Medicare is now talking to a contract company? The same is true for many departments within the Federal Govt.
 
Yes I did actually, and it was a interesting story thank you sealy, but my point all along here as it has been in the frist posting was that there are some things the Federal Govt. just is simply bad at doing and that is true when it comes to the civilian service or delivering service to people in general. I do agree that the system need to be reformed and in such a way as to allow it not to become this giant money source for friends of whatever party happens to be in power but more a bidding process issue that makes it fair and open, where not only the best bid wins but the most qualified. There are also issues involved in come cases like the US Military as I mentioned before where IMHO there has been too much outsourcing and it needs to be reviewed but that the limited personnel make it difficult without adding additional rotations to existing guard units or instituting a draft which again would in my opnion decrease the fighting ability of the Military. On the Medicare issue sealy, did you know that most of that is now outsourced? Did you further know , that when a Senior or someone that calls Medicare is now talking to a contract company? The same is true for many departments within the Federal Govt.


Now I can't argue with anything you just said. I hope you're happy. :lol:


Great reply. It told me that you understand the points that I was trying to make.

PS. No, I didn't know parts of Medicare are being outsourced.
 
Here is another conservative doing what I warned you they do.

They don't want to discuss what kind of jobs should and shouldn't be outsourced. They don't want to admit that Bush/The GOP outsourced work that ended up costing the tax payers more.

So instead they suggest that we want the government to do EVERYTHING when no one said that.

I think they did the same thing with Regulations. We kept telling them that Bush went too far with deregulations and they kept arguing that government wants to regulate everything!!!

Are you the same as editec? If so, I'll respond to your post. And BTW, I'm not a conservative.
 
No reason it couldn't.

In fact, being able to hand out sweet highly profitable contracts to private industries gives those in charge of our government far more power than simply hiring government employees to do those tasks.

Who do you suppose is making more money serving in Iraq?

The guys in uniform, or the guys working for Blackwater?

My guess is that the guy making real money in Iraq is Erik Prince, the guy who owns Blackwater... but BW management probably does pay better than Marine Lieutenant.

-Joe
 
Provide evidence of your accusation, including cost comparison. :eusa_whistle:

New President Faces Powerful Federal Contractors : NPR

President-elect Obama has said he wants public employees to take back some of the work that the Bush administration has given to contractors — and he wants to crack down on contractors' abuses.

Bush administration officials have hired corporations to do more of the government's work than ever before — twice as much, in dollars.

The Bush administration had barely invaded Iraq before controversies started swirling around its contractors — including allegations that Halliburton bilked the government, and Blackwater security forces killed innocent civilians.

Of course, the military has always hired contractors to support the troops. They make tanks and planes and ready-to-eat meals. But the current administration has gone way beyond that. There are more contractors handling the war in Iraq than U.S. troops. Some are making the kinds of decisions that government employees used to make.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half the employees in the CDC'S Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases — which helps coordinate the nation's strategy to fight flu, AIDS and food-borne outbreaks — are corporate contractors. The Department of Homeland Security depends so much on contractors, the GAO reports, that officials there have hired contractors to supervise other contractors.

Tiefer says some government employees do a bad job, and some contractors do a great job. But he says federal workers, at least, have to swear an oath to defend the Constitution, just like soldiers do. Not contractors.

What mission is more important than collecting income taxes? A few years ago, officials at the Internal Revenue Service hired commercial collection companies to help them. Today, if the IRS thinks you owe it money, you might get barraged with calls from the same kinds of companies that pursue you when you're late on a car loan or a doctor's bill.

Then, why doesn't the IRS just hire more staff? The answer has to do with politics. President Bush and Congress have competed over who is the most opposed to "big government." Not many lawmakers, especially Republicans, have been willing to suggest hiring more civil servants.

So, officials at the IRS turned to industry, telling collection companies that they could keep up to 25 percent of what they collected from the taxpayers they tracked down. That means the IRS doesn't pay the companies out of its budget. But it also means the collection firms have a financial incentive to hound people.

When you talk to IRS agents, they are required to tell you immediately where they work and why they want to speak with you. But recordings of calls from collection companies — which the House Ways and Means Committee obtained last year, during an investigation of IRS contracts — show that the firms' employees left at least one taxpayer worried and confused. The collection workers refused to give their full names or describe why they kept calling him, yet they kept pressing him for his Social Security number — despite widespread warnings from government officials that consumers should never disclose private information to anonymous callers.

Curiously, 85 percent of the people the companies called didn't even owe back taxes, according to a federal report. But the IRS still uses those firms, even though calls like the ones played at the hearing made some officials cringe.

In the big picture, nobody knows how many contractors working for the government are doing a bad job or a good one. The GAO reports that administration officials don't keep track of that information. But investigations have exposed bungling or scandals in scores of contracts at agencies including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Transportation, as well as the Pentagon.

President Eisenhower warned about three days before he left office in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," Eisenhower said in a legendary speech. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
 
Are you suggesting that the government put an end to outside contracting and do everything internal?

No I am suggesting exactly what I said.

That outsoucing is NOT the panacea to limit government spending.

In fact government outsourcing often ends up costing more than having the government do it themselves.

Each case must be decided on its own merits. They devil is in the details

But one thing that is obvious to me is that outsourcing can be and is being used to make some corporations fabulously wealthy at the taxpayers expense.

It is a new form of patronage.

Incidently, I do not expect to see the Democrats stop using this system of rewarding their political cronnies, either.

It's a system that's too good for whomsoever is in power to throw it away.
 
Don't see a cost comparison. :eusa_whistle:

If you listened to the story, IRS agents collected 3 times the money that the outsourced collecters brought in. They were 3 times better!!!

Let's face it, you asked for one instance where the government does it better than private industry and I just showed you one. Now deal with it. :eusa_whistle:
 
No I am suggesting exactly what I said.

That outsoucing is NOT the panacea to limit government spending.

In fact government outsourcing often ends up costing more than having the government do it themselves.

Each case must be decided on its own merits. They devil is in the details

But one thing that is obvious to me is that outsourcing can be and is being used to make some corporations fabulously wealthy at the taxpayers expense.

It is a new form of patronage.

Incidently, I do not expect to see the Democrats stop using this system of rewarding their political cronnies, either.

It's a system that's too good for whomsoever is in power to throw it away.

Are you suggesting that we do away with all corporations???:cuckoo:
 
If you listened to the story, IRS agents collected 3 times the money that the outsourced collecters brought in. They were 3 times better!!!

Let's face it, you asked for one instance where the government does it better than private industry and I just showed you one. Now deal with it. :eusa_whistle:



Though I haven't seen the data on this, common sense tells me that you are correct. However, to be fair, you are not comparing apples to oranges. The IRS can step in, in rather short time and with little effort and cease things, control account and so on, as the private sector collectors cannot, at least not in the same time frame or really in the same fashion. My point is, the IRS carries a much larger stick and can act more forcefully on their threats, including incarceration.

So as your claim is correct, the playing field is not exactly the same.
 
Though I haven't seen the data on this, common sense tells me that you are correct. However, to be fair, you are not comparing apples to oranges. The IRS can step in, in rather short time and with little effort and cease things, control account and so on, as the private sector collectors cannot, at least not in the same time frame or really in the same fashion. My point is, the IRS carries a much larger stick and can act more forcefully on their threats, including incarceration.

So as your claim is correct, the playing field is not exactly the same.

Good point. If you listened to the story on NPR, what you are talking about is another concern of outsourcing. You don't want to give corporations the power that we give government employees.

Government employees take an oath to uphold the constitution. Government's concern is the citizens. Corporations concern is their profits.

So regardless of why, the government is better at collecting taxes than corporations are. Is it possible that corporations could get better at doing it and end up being cheaper? Sure. But right now, they are not.

And all of our greatest presidents have warned us about corporations getting too powerful. Yet for 8 years the GOP have outsourced just about everything. They love to privatize profits and socialize the losses.
 

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