Did you know that hiring contractors to augment the federal workforce was a felony? And that it has been since 1884? If not, neither did I and I learned that and a lot more by reading Robert J. Hanrahan Jr.’s post at RCPolicy:
The civil service’s growth is limited by the budgets enacted by Congress and executed by the president. But many federal agencies do an end run around hiring freezes by hiring contractors instead of federal employees to perform government work. The result? Bureaucracy expands rather than shrinks, congressional oversight is lost, ethical restrictions don’t apply, and government growth continues in defiance of known laws.
This is a purely political problem; by hiring contractors rather than increasing the size of the federal civil services the Congress can claim that they’re limiting the growth of government without actually limiting the growth of government.
I’m glad that more light is being shed on this dark corner of government. How dark is it? Nobody really knows how many contractors are presently being employed by the federal government. The first step towards honesty in government is honesty and the honest truth is that we presently demand lots of goods and services from the federal government—indeed, more than we’re willing to pay for. I’m on the record as being in support of sweeping civil service reform but, frankly, one of the byproducts of that reform will be a lot more civil service employees than we have now and a lot fewer contractors.
