A Contractor's Secret: 'We're Not Cheaper'

Over at The Daily Dish, they've got a little recurring feature going called "About My Job." The one they posted from an employee of a federal IT contractor in Northern Virginia contained this gem:

I am part of the hidden civil service, the legions of contractors who bulk out the federal government without showing up in civil service headcount and without - to be perfectly frank - delivering the same work for less than government staff. We might be faster, or more efficient (sometimes, anyway), but we're not cheaper. Such are the exigencies of national politics though, that it's easier to have a shadow civil service for 120 - 130% of the cost of the actual civil service, in order to say that the government hasn't grown.