How Companies Hide the Spoils of Winning Government Contracts “Too often the American people don’t know who Washington is working for,” said Barack Obama while campaigning in September 2007, “and when they find out, they don’t like what they hear.” As a first-term senator, he was a co-sponsor of the legislation that created USASpending.gov. In the lead-up to the 2008 election, he promised to create a website that would try to provide information on who benefited not only from federal spending decisions, but also tax breaks and earmarks. But after six years in office, little has changed. It’s still within Obama’s power to bring those ideas to life. He could start by requiring all governmental agencies to report their spending data to USASpending.gov and expand the kinds of transactions reported to include things like royalties paid by mining and energy companies operating on federal lands and those that profit from public-assistance programs like food stamps. He might ask Congress to require for-profit corporations—not including small businesses—to disclose their tax returns just like nonprofit organizations do. Then he might finally make good on his promise to make the relationship between money and government clearer. Read more govexec/contracting/2014/12/how-companies-hide-spoils-winning-government-contracts/100572/
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 01:00:00 +0000
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