Report Says Heimatschutzministerium Wastes Taxpayers’ Billions

According to a report issued yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security, the beloved Heimatschutzministerium, is wasting money by the millions if not billions. The report, which hit the media by way of a Washington Post report from Griff Witte and Spencer S. Hu, said 32 contracts with a combined value of $34 billion “experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement.” If this isn’t giving aid and comfort to Al Qaeda, one wonders what would.

The big problem in the department, as with all US government procurement, is the “no-bid contract.” According to Messrs. Witte and Hu, “The value of contracts awarded without full competition increased 739 percent from 2003 to 2005, to $5.5 billion, more than half the $10 billion awarded by the department that year. By comparison, the agency awarded a total of $3.5 billion in contracts in 2003, the year it was created.” When the department was first created, one might believe that no-bid contracts might be necessary while procedures were created for full competition (which is the American Way, after all). Two years later, that argument doesn’t hold a drop of water.

Waste is part of life, and the best one can hope to achieve is a constant effort to keep it to a minimum. Government is not inherently efficient, and so waste here might be more commonplace than elsewhere. Waste in filling potholes, painting the signs at Yellowstone National Park or running the air conditioning too much at the Smithsonian is bad. Waste when it comes to things that are supposed to protect American lives and property is much worse.

Former department inspector general Clark Kent Ervin said, “Every dollar that is wasted on a contract is a dollar less that could be used to make Americans more secure. This kind of abuse constitutes a security gap all its own in America's defense.” No one complains when a soldier uses a few extra bullets to take out the bad guy, but if he doesn’t have the bullets because someone somewhere else won a no-bid contract that over-promised and under-delivered, then there’s a problem.

Heimatschutzministerium spokesman Russ Knocke defended the bureaucracy pointing out that some of the contracts were Transportation Security Administration deals made before the TSA was part of his body. “It’s hard to imagine that the report can criticize the department for a contract made before the department was created,” he complained quite justly. Yet the question is, what has the department done since then? Correction the situation would be good.

Congressman Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA) chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said the department’s “acquisition structure and workforce challenges . . . betray serious weaknesses that are impeding the ability of DHS to protect the homeland.” Ranking Democrat on the Committee, California’s Henry Waxman, said, the department has “a pattern of reckless spending, poor planning and ineffective oversight that is wasting taxpayers’ dollars and undermining our security efforts.” A bipartisan recognition of a problem is the first step to a solution.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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