By Mario Trujillo
Under Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter acknowledged Monday that waste at the hands of U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a major concern.
A total of $400 billion of the Department Of Defense’s $700 billion budget is contracted out equally divided between goods and services, according to Carter, who appeared Monday before the Commission on Wartime Contracting. About 7 percent of that is lost due to fraud, the commission has discovered.
The Wartime Contracting Commission was formed by congress in 2008 to help drive down the waste, fraud and abuse in U.S. contracts. Last month it released a report outlining 32 solutions. The Under Secretary agreed with and is implementing 19. He found fault with four and said nine were out of his jurisdiction.
Both the committee and Carter agreed on things like implementing broader oversight measures and increasing competition among companies when bidding for U.S. contracts. Co-Chairman of the Committee Christopher Shays noted that $55 billion in contracts that were supposed to be competitive only attracted one bid in 2010.
Among other things, the commission also recommended judging a company’s past performance solely on what can be found in the government database. Carter disagreed, noting that that would give a disadvantage to companies with a good track record that have worked with other nations in a certain area but not with the U.S., skewing the playing field.
The combined total of contractor employees from the DoD, State Department and USAID totaled nearly 200,000 in 2010, according to the commissions report. The final report from the commission is due out in July.