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Return to Article: Defense punts on Iraq contractor census

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  I remember doing the payroll for my father's sheet metal company back in the late 70's. When working on a government job, the company had to submit the following data on a one of their standard forms each week: List all personnel that worked on the job, what minority/gender worked on the job, hours worked, apprentice or journeyman scale. I guess the government doesn't require these forms anymore -- such a shame. We did it by the stubby pencil method, with technology today; this info would be a piece of cake to collect. But by the sounds of the article, they too, are doing it by stubby pencil. Mr. Light couldn't have stated it any better, "five and a half contractors and grantees for every federal civil servant " and "the lack of hard headcounts from the hidden workforce prevent the kind of labor-cost comparisons that might drive some jobs back into the civil service." This is just another form of waste, fraud and abuse of our tax dollars.

  Patricia Posted October 26, 2006 11:49 AM
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  This is another example of bad information requested by OMB and Congress after the fact! If they want to know the number of people and their location, the contracts should be written with that information required and a process by which it is collected and reported in a timely manner. It should be part of the contract the bidders bid on because this data effort costs a lot of money and has little value as is true for many OMB requests and most congressional requests.

  Taxpayer Posted October 25, 2006 9:00 AM