WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has greatly expanded the use of contracts with private companies to provide public goods and services even as the number of government employees has increased, a congressional report has found.
But the administration's tilt toward doing business with private companies has failed to bring promised savings and has been characterized by "significant waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement," according to the report released this week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.
Of particular concern, the report said, were contracts related to domestic security, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina recovery.
Waxman's report is described as the first comprehensive assessment of contracting under the Bush administration, which had vowed upon taking office in January 2001 to provide services more efficiently while reducing the size of government.
It reveals an 86% increase in contracts with private businesses, from $203 billion in 2000 to $377.5 billion a year in 2005 -- a growth rate nearly double that of federal spending as a whole.
At the same time, federal payrolls also have grown: The government now has about 1,874,000 civilian employees, up from 1,738,000 five years ago.
"We've never seen [private] contracting on the scale that we're seeing now," Waxman said. "Nearly 40 cents of every dollar appropriated goes to private contractors, which is a record level."
Yet, Waxman said, his biggest concern is not the growth in contracts, but the abuse of them.
Poor contract planning and weak oversight, the report said, have led to government overspending and corruption by companies that have padded their invoices, charged for services not provided and received award fees for jobs that were completed late.
"Taxpayers should be outraged at the billions of dollars that have been wasted," said Waxman. "And the Bush administration isn't learning from its mistakes, it's repeating them."
In many cases, the report found, the types and terms of the contracts have made them ripe for abuse:
* Spending on cost-plus contracts -- under which the government bears the risk of cost overruns -- has increased from $62 billion in 2000 to $110 billion in 2005.
* Spending on no-bid contracts -- those granted without competition from other companies -- rose 110%, to $97.8 billion, during the same period.
