BOSTON — For two decades, Congress has been engaged in a bipartisan effort to shrink the size of government. But today, although fewer people appear on federal payrolls, more people than ever work for the U.S. government.
This seeming paradox has been achieved by hiring private contractors to perform many of the tasks previously performed by federal employees. And although it may not have resulted in a true downsizing of government, it has radically transformed the way public services are provided.
The war in Iraq has turned the spotlight on the shift. Government contractors are working in Iraq as prison interrogators, bomb defusers and armed bodyguards for U.S. officials. They've landed lucrative contracts to rebuild infrastructure and to feed American troops. And some of them have paid dearly for their service.
Paul Johnson, beheaded last month by Islamic militants in Iraq, worked as an engineer for Lockheed Martin. The four Americans whose bodies were mutilated by a mob in Fallouja worked for Blackwater Security, a "strategic support" firm that, among other things, was responsible for protecting U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III. More than 100 other contract employees, including about 40 Halliburton employees, have lost their lives while driving trucks, cooking dinner or cleaning up damaged oil wells. This year, the United States will spend $275 billion -- more than 10% of the federal budget -- buying goods and services from private contractors, often through contracts never fully opened to competitive bidding. Much of this work will be poorly managed and inadequately monitored, and yet private contractors have become indispensable to the workings of the government.
Nobody knows exactly how many contractors the government employs. Paul Light of the Brookings Institution estimates that the federal budget funds a "shadow government" of nearly 6 million contractors, about half of them in defense. That means contractors outnumber civil servants and military personnel by a ratio of 2 to 1.
In Iraq, there are at least 50,000 private security contractors working for KBR (a Halliburton subsidiary), Bechtel, Kroll, Blackwater and others. In some cases, U.S. companies have recruited these workers from the ranks of mercenaries in Chile, South Africa and other countries.
