Privatization of Federal Services
Introduction
The Administration is determined to privatize as many as 1,000,000 federal
employee jobs over the next several years, either by handing them over to
contractors without any public-private competition or by subjecting them to a new
public-private competition process that has been rewritten to favor contractors at
the expense of taxpayers as well as federal employees.
The Administration’s radical privatization scheme fails to take into account the
actual cost of contractors, exacerbates the “human capital crisis,” hurts taxpayers
by giving work to contractors without any public-private competition, uses publicprivate competition only on work performed by federal employees (instead of also
on new work and work performed by contractors), and undercuts workers on their
wages and benefits.
AFGE Activists can fight back against the Administration’s radical privatization
scheme by urging their lawmakers to cosponsor the new version of the
Truthfulness, Responsibility, and Accountability in Contracting (TRAC) Act,
support TRAC-like amendments to specific authorization and appropriations bills,
vote for measures to free agencies from privatization quotas (whether selfimposed or imposed by the Office of Management and Budget), oppose the
imposition of a clearly pro-contractor rewrite of the privatization process (a.k.a.
OMB Circular A-76), and vote against the new version of the strongly antitaxpayer Service Acquisition Reform Act.
Background Information
The Administration is determined to hand over to private, for-profit contractors
roughly one-half of all services performed by the federal government. From
providing health care to our nation's veterans to guarding dangerous prisoners to
supervising housing contractors to safeguarding the borders to processing Social
Security checks to repairing the planes, ships, and tanks necessary to defend our
homeland, it will all be given to private, for-profit contractors, most of them very
politically-connected, if Administration officials have their way.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has told agencies to review for
privatization, either with or without public-private competition, the jobs of at least
850,000 federal employees. As a result of pressure from OMB, agencies are
increasing their privatization targets, so the number of federal employees under
attack will soon approach 1,000,000. At the same time, OMB is completing a
controversial rewrite of OMB Circular A-76, which establishes rules for publicprivate competition, in order to make the process even more biased in favor of
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contractors because of complaints from contractors that they could only win 40%
of the competitions conducted under the existing privatization process.
Clearly, the Administration is at war with the working and middle class Americans
who make up the federal civil service. As evidenced by the debate over
legislation to establish a Department of Homeland Security, if Administration
officials can't bust their unions, or eliminate their civil service protections, then
they'll privatize their jobs. The ultimate goal of the Administration is to transform
the civil service into a "spoils system", which would consist of a largely union-free
workforce of poorly-compensated contractor employees with no protections
against politically-inspired dismissals and discipline.
Observers have noted the political calculations that inspired the Administration's
privatization initiative. As Paul Krugman, the distinguished economist, wrote in
The New York Times of the Administration's privatization scheme, "So am I
saying that we are going back to the days of Boss Tweed and Mark Hanna?
Gosh, no—those guys were pikers. One-party control of today's government
offers opportunities to reward friends and punish enemies that the old machine
politicians never dreamed of. How far can the new spoils system be pushed? To
what extent will it be used to lock in a permanent political advantage for the ruling
party? Stay tuned; I'm sure we'll soon find out."
Here are the five worst flaws in the Administration’s privatization scheme:
1. Fails To Account For The Cost Of Contractors: Federal agencies already
contract out in excess of $125 billion annually for services. In 2000,
according to the General Accounting Office (GAO), agencies already contract
out for $128 billion annually for services, almost always without public-private
competition. While the federal government’s expenditures for supplies and
equipment has declined from $150 billion in 1985 to just $77 billion in 2000,
the bill to taxpayers for services has grown from 44% of all federal contracting
to 62% during the same period, according to GAO.
Athough the Administration is poised to transfer additional billions and billions
of taxpayer dollars to contractors through an accelerated privatization
process, undoubtedly the largest transfer ever of taxpayer-financed public
sector services, assets, and employees to private sector interests, federal
agencies have no systems in place to track the costs and quality of service
contracting. In fact, some agencies don't even know which services are being
provided by contractors.
The most recent examination of service contracting by the Department of
Defense (DoD), the agency that spends the most taxpayer dollars on service
contracting, left the Inspector General "startled" because his office "found
problems with every one of the 105" contract surveyed. "In nearly 10 years of
managing the audit office of the IG, DoD, I do not ever recall finding problems
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on every item…" However, the same is true with non-DoD agencies. For
example, the Department of Transportation Inspector General, last
November, declared that its review of the Federal Aviation Administration’s
(FAA) oversight of a massive service contract with a potential cost to
taxpayers of $1 billion for as many as 22.5 million labor hours of technical and
professional services “was seriously inadequate because it did not acquire
services efficiently or control costs…This review is the third report issued by
our office in the last two years identifying as lack of FAA oversight on costreimbursable contracts. We have consistently found a lack of basic contract
administration at every stage of contract management from contract award to
contract closeout.”
According to the General Accounting Office, "In fiscal year 1999, DoD
reportedly spent $96.5 billion for contract services-more than it spent on
supplies and equipment. Nevertheless there have been longstanding
concerns regarding the accuracy and reliability of DoD's reporting on the
costs related to contract services-particularly that expenditures were being
improperly justified and classified and accounting systems used to track
expenditures were inadequate…DoD has not developed a proposal to revise
and improve the accuracy of the reporting of contract service costs. DoD
officials told us that various internal options were under consideration;
however, these officials did not provide any details of these options. DoD
officials stated that the momentum to develop a proposal to improve the
reporting of contract services costs had subsided. Without improving this
situation, DoD's report on the costs of contract services will still be inaccurate
and likely understate what DoD is paying for certain types of services."
Federal employees and their work are already meticulously tracked and
documented in extraordinary detail through the budget, appropriations and
Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act inventories processes. The new OMB
rewrite of OMB Circular A-76 imposes additional accountability provisions on
federal employees—but, significantly, none on contractors.
2. Exacerbates The "Human Capital Crisis": The federal government is
experiencing a "human capital crisis", shortages of federal employees in
occupational category after occupational category, caused in large part by
indiscriminate downsizing and privatization over the last dozen years, which,
with little if any foresight or planning, has slashed the federal workforce by
more than 400,000.
The Administration's attempt to eliminate more than one-half of the remaining
workforce will only exacerbate the "human capital crisis." Indeed, the
extraordinarily aggressive nature of the Administration's privatization effort will
surely make it more difficult for agencies to recruit and retain the best
possible federal employees. While most see the "human capital crisis" as a
challenge that must be met by gradually rebuilding the federal civil service,
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Administration officials see it as an opportunity to accelerate its effort to use
privatization of federal services to benefit campaign contributors. Moreover,
while acknowledging that agencies have already contracted out inherently
governmental services, OMB officials have told agencies to consider any job
as suitable for privatization.
3. Gives Work To Contractors Without Any Public-Private Competition:
Despite much talk about public-private competition, agencies are directly
converting work performed by federal employees to private sector
performance without any public-private competition. In fact, the
Administration's privatization quotas explicitly encourage agencies to do so.
The Department of Defense (DoD), the agency that has the most experience
with public-private competition, admits that contractors had to compete
against federal employees for only 2% of its contracts.
Some agencies, the Department of the Army in particular, intend to privatize
tens of thousands of jobs without any public-private competition, using a
corporate welfare-style method called "divestiture," which turns out to be
nothing less than the transfer to politically well-connected contractors of
services performed by federal employees, the actual federal employees who
perform those services, and the equipment used by the federal employees
who perform those services. Significantly, considering how they have touted
public-private competition, at least in public, especially in the context of the
rewritten privatization process, OMB officials have refused to repudiate the
Army's manifestly anti-competitive privatization initiative.
The situation is the same for the non-DoD agencies. The Department of
Veterans Affairs (DVA) has been ordered by OMB, regardless of the needs of
veterans or DVA’s mission, to review for privatization at least 15% of all jobs
listed on the agency’s Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act inventory of
noninherently governmental jobs. Because the vast majority of jobs in DVA
are statutorily or administratively exempt from public-private competition, that
means almost every single job reviewed will be given to contractors without
any public-private competition. Other agencies report that they are also
having to privatize without any public-private competition, even to the point
that historically-oppressed groups are paying an incredibly disproportionate
price. According to the Department of Transportation, “For smaller agencies
or sub-agencies where direct conversion is the only method, the impact of
contracting out does affect the minorities and women more than any other
group.”
4. Uses Public-Private Competition Inequitably: Public-private competition is
exclusively a one-way street. Federal employees are almost never allowed to
compete for new work and contractor work. This failure is a particular
disservice to taxpayers because there is often little competition between
contractors for work. The DoD IG has reported that in excess of three-fifths of
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the contracts he and his staff surveyed suffered from "inadequate
competition." Regardless of the level of private-private competition, 77% of
the surveyed contracts had "inadequate cost estimates" that, according to the
DoD IG, "clearly left the government vulnerable-and sometimes at the mercy
of the contractor to define the cost."
Allowing federal employees opportunities to compete for new government
work and government work already contracted out would ensure that
taxpayers are no longer at the mercy of sole-source contractors. Insourcing,
bringing work in-house, where it can be performed by reliable and
experienced public sector employees on a not-for-profit basis, is common at
local levels of government. According to Cornell University, "there is
significant incidence of reverse privatization or contracting back in previously
privatized services…From 1992-1997, 88 percent of governments had
contracted back in at least one service and 65 percent had contracted back in
more than three services. On average across all places, 5 services were
contracted back in from 1992 to 1997."
Despite much talk about using the new circular to insource as well as
outsource, the fact remains that OMB has imposed quotas only to privatize
work performed by federal employees, not to ensure that agencies finally start
subjecting new work and work performed by contractors to public-private
competition. In fact, by refusing to establish systems to track work performed
by contractors, the new circular makes it impossible for agencies to
systematically review work performed by contractors for possible taxpayer
dollar-saving insourcing.
5. Privatizes To Undercut Workers On Their Wages And Benefits: The new
privatization process crafted by the Administration does nothing to eliminate
perverse incentives to privatize work in order to provide those who perform
government work with inferior compensation packages. As the Economic
Policy Institute (EPI) has reported, "Even the federal government jobs at the
low end of the pay scale have historically paid better and have had more
generous benefits than comparable private sector jobs. As a result, workers
who work directly for the federal government through contracts with private
industry are not likely to receive wages and benefits comparable to federal
workers."
Privatization can sometimes save money, if only in the short term. However,
federal agencies should never privatize in order to lower the living standards
of those who perform the work of government. However, the Administration's
rewrite of the privatization process actually increases the emphasis on wages
and benefits in award decisions.
Conclusion
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"After abuses too infamous to ignore," as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
noted in testimony last year, "the nation as a matter of law and policy rejected a
`spoils system' allowing new presidents to replace their predecessors' workforces
with cronies and political supporters. We adopted, instead, a civil service system
to ensure that the American people would always be served by women and men
who chose to devote their lives to the public good rather than private gain. Rankand-file federal employees provide the continuity, attention to details, and
institutional memory necessary to ensure that the American people continue to
be the best governed in the world. Because they are not political appointees,
these civil servants can do their job of serving the public without fear or favor.
And because civil servants are part of the enduring fabric of government, the
American people can always count on them for service, regardless of a
President's political affiliation or ideological bent…
"(The privatization scheme) raises grave concerns that, under the banner of
`efficiency,' the nation could well return to a latter day `spoils system.' The real
possibility exists that in the future, lucrative service contracts paid for by
taxpayers will be doled out in ways the civil service system was created to
prevent. While some would undoubtedly win under such a scheme, most of us
would be losers."
Fighting Back
Here are the issues on which you can lobby your Representative and Senators:
1. Cosponsor the Truthfulness, Responsibility, and Accountability in
Contracting (TRAC) Act. In the 107th Congress, H.R. 721 and S. 1156
claimed 190 and 26 cosponsors, respectively. Both bills will be introduced in
the 108th Congress by their champions, Representative Al Wynn (D-MD) and
Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL).
The TRAC Act would require agencies to establish reliable and
comprehensive systems to track the cost and quality of work performed by
contractors; allows federal employees to compete in defense of their own
jobs, for at least some new work, and for work performed by contractors (to
the extent contractors are allowed to compete for work performed by federal
employees); and ensures that public-private competition is taxpayer-friendly
by using a cost-based process that takes into account al relevant issues of
quality so that agencies can get the best possible services at the lowest
possible prices.
Please check Privatization Appendix I for lists of cosponsors of the TRAC Act
during 2001 and 2002 to see where your lawmakers stood. If they didn’t
cosponsor, why not? Was it because they don’t believe agencies should
ensure that contractors are performing in the best interests of the taxpayers?
Was it because they didn’t think federal employees should have chances to
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compete in defense of their jobs before they were given to contractors? Was
it because they thought contractors should receive new work and retain their
own work without ever having to compete against contractors?
2. Support TRAC-like amendments to specific authorization and
appropriations bills. Last year, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) offered a
floor amendment to the defense authorization bill that would have ensured
real cost-based public-private competition for work performed by federal
employees, new work, and contractor work, failing by just a single vote.
Please check Privatization Appendix II for how your Senators voted in 2002
on the Kennedy Amendment. If they didn’t why not? Was it because they
didn’t think DoD employees should have opportunities to compete in defense
of their own jobs before they were given to contractors? Was it because they
didn’t think DoD employees should have a chance to compete for even a tiny
fraction of new work? Was it because they think contractors should never be
required to compete against DoD employees for work currently outsourced?
Or was it because they don’t think the work of contractors should be
monitored as extensively as work performed by DoD employees? AFGE will
work with Congressional allies to offer similar amendments to other
authorization and appropriations bills during the 108th Congress.
3. Support efforts to free agencies from privatization quotas, whether selfimposed or imposed by OMB. Although the 107th Congress did not finish
work on the Treasury Appropriations Bill, both the House and Senate versions
of that legislation included provisions freeing agencies from the OMB
numerical privatization quotas. In 2002, Representative Jim Moran (D-VA)
and Frank Wolf (R-VA) offered a bipartisan floor amendment to the House
Treasury Appropriations Bill to eliminate the OMB numerical privatization
quotas that passed by a margin of 261 to 166.
Please check Privatization Appendix III for how your Representative voted on
last year’s Moran-Wolf Amendment. If your Representative voted against the
Moran-Wolf Amendment, why? Is it because they think the political dictates
of OMB should take precedence over the mission of your agency and the
needs of your agency’s customers? Is it because they think quotas should
apply only to your work, but not new work or work performed by contractors?
Is it because they know that a significant number of jobs under review
because of the quotas will be given to cotnractors without public-private
competition—and they think this is a good thing?
A provision similar to the Moran-Wolf Amendment was included in the FY03
Senate Treasury Appropriations Bill last year by Senators Byron Dorgan (DND) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), in response to a request included in a
2002 letter organized by the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). Please
check Appendix IV to see if either or both of your Senators signed Senator
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Wellstone’s letter. However, immediately upon the Senate changing hands
early in 2003, the anti-quotas provision was stricken by the new leadership of
the Appropriations Committee.
4. Oppose the imposition of a clearly pro-contractor rewrite of the publicprivate competition rules. Upset that federal employees were winning three
out of five public-private competitions conducted under OMB Circular A-76,
contractors demanded that the Administration change the rules so that
contractors could win more competitions and win those competitions more
quickly. In fact, one contractor hired gun said the Administration’s proposed
changes to OMB Circular A-76 would so tilt the process that contractors could
win nine out of ten competitions.
Although the proposed rewrite of the circular has ignited a firestorm of
criticism, particularly from agencies, most observers expect that the changes
will, nonetheless, be implemented in early 2003. Among the flaws and
inequities in the proposal, as it was published on November 14, 2002,
a. The rewritten circular would retain and even expand upon existing direct
conversion methods of giving work to contractors without public-private
competition that are included in the current circular, including special
authorities for smaller functions, whenever it can be claimed to not
adversely impact federal employees, waivers, and business case
analyses.
Moreover, the rewritten circular would significantly increase the
possibilities for direct conversions.
For example, if the managers
responsible for submitting the in-house tenders don’t do so punctually, the
federal employees performing the work, utterly blameless, could pay for
the failure of others by having their jobs directly converted without publicprivate competition. Similarly, if the competition is not finished by an
arbitrary deadline, the federal employees performing the work, utterly
blameless, could pay for the failure of others by having their jobs directly
converted without public-private competition.
Even when federal
employees win under the new pro-contractor process, the rewritten
circular explicitly encourages managers to consider directly converting
their jobs to contractor performance without public-private competition
when their performance periods expire.
b. While OMB officials will occasionally concede that public-private
competition should work both ways—subjecting work performed by
contractors to public-private competition as well as work performed by
federal employees, especially given that contractors have acquired almost
all of their work without ever having to compete against federal employees
and often without having to compete against one another—OMB’s
privatization quotas are completely one-way. Although at least 850,000
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federal employee jobs will be reviewed for privatization, not a single
contractor job is scheduled to be examined for insourcing.
The rewritten circular continues this anti-taxpayer, anti-federal employee
approach. On the very first page of the draft, it is insisted that the
rewritten circular is to be used on “all commercial activities performed by
government personnel.” (Emphasis added)
Naturally, the rewritten
circular reflects that bias. In order to perform new work, federal
employees would have to compete—but not necessarily contractors. In
order to continue to perform work that increases in value by just 30%,
federal employees would have to compete—but not necessarily
contractors. In order to retain work that they had already won through the
pro-contractor rewritten circular, federal employees would have to
compete or even be directly converted—but not necessarily contractors.
In order to keep work after a default, federal employees would have to
compete or even be directly converted—but not necessarily contractors.
Whether or not contractors would have to compete in those circumstances
is determined by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR); and, as the
OMB official principally responsible for the preparation of this draft has
publicly acknowledged, the FAR has significant problems with respect to
ensuring that the federal government’s massive army of contractors face
competition when acquiring and retaining government work paid for
through taxpayer dollars. According to OFPP Administrator Styles, "Since
the beginning of the (acquisition) reform movement, over a decade ago, I
have not seen a serious examination of the effects of reform on
competition, fairness, integrity, or transparency. As a result, I think we are
seeing some serious competitive problems surface with the proliferation of
government-wide contracting vehicles and service contracting."
c. The rewritten circular actually exacerbates the perverse incentive to
privatize work in order to reduce the pay and benefits of those who
perform work for the federal government by imposing redundant and
irrelevant indirect personnel costs on in-house proposals. EPI, in its
ground-breaking 2000 study, determined that more than one in ten federal
contractor employees earn less than the “living wage” of $17,000 per
annum, i.e., the amount of money necessary to keep a family of four out of
poverty: “The federal government saves money by contracting work to
employers who pay less than a living wage ($8.20 per hour)…”
d. Although the Administration has claimed repeatedly that its policy of
reviewing as many as 1,000,000 federal employee jobs for privatization is
motivated by a desire to save taxpayer dollars, the new public-private
competition process emphasizes the use of subjective factors at the
expense of objective, cost-based criteria. Cost and quality are both
important. Using a process that is ultimately cost-based ensures that
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agencies can acquire the services they want, at the quality they need, for
the lowest possible prices.
Historically, allowing feelings and hearsay to take precedence over the
bottom line of what's best for taxpayers has consistently led to higher
costs. It has also worsened long-standing, "revolving door" problems of
bias and conflict of interest in federal procurement, no small matter
considering the Administration's pronounced favoritism towards federal
service contractors, most of whom will be expected to contribute
generously to the President's re-election campaign.
Moreover, while making the privatization process more subjective and
vulnerable to bias and corruption, the Administration has done nothing to
rectify an obvious and longstanding inequity: contractors—only
contractors—have the right to contest agencies' procurement decisions
before the General Accounting Office and the Court of Federal Claims.
5. Oppose the Service Acquisition Reform Act (SARA), which, as
introduced last year (H.R. 3832), was one of the most anti-taxpayer bills
to be considered by the Congress, and was strongly opposed by agency
inspectors general, public interest groups such as the Project on Government
Oversight, and several unions, including the American Federation of
Government Employees, American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees, International Association of Machinists, National
Association of Air Traffic Controllers, National Treasury Employees Union,
Professional Airways Systems Specialists, and the AFL-CIO Professional
Employees Department.
Last year’s SARA was a lengthy service contractor wish-list that would have,
among other things, drastically reduced government oversight of service
contractors, created many additional possibilities for service contractor
conflicts of interest, substantially reduced competition between service
contractors, and significantly increased the losses to taxpayers from service
contractor waste, fraud, and abuse by
a. Encouraging agencies to entrust contract administration responsibilities to
contractors: Would have entrusted sensitive contract administration work
to short-term contractor employees, creating myriad conflict of interest
problems. Would have encouraged agencies to send their best acquisition
professionals to work for contractors. Would have provided in-house
acquisition workforce with no real training. Would have made no additions
to an already too small and rapidly dwindling in-house acquisition
workforce.
b. Strengthening contractors’ appellate rights while leaving federal
employees with no appellate rights: Would have forced agencies to rule
Privatization of Federal Services
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even faster on contractor appeals, even at the expense of making the
right decisions. Would have done nothing about the failure to give federal
employees any appellate rights at all.
c. Paying contractors even faster—at the expense of taxpayers: Would have
required that contractors be paid even faster, for no other reason than to
improve contractors' cash flow. Would have added much work to already
hard-pressed in-house acquisition workforce and wind up costing
taxpayers more than they pay today for the same services.
d. Increasing the micro-purchase threshold from $2,500 to $25,000 as well
as the possibility for misuse of federal purchase cards: Would have
greatly expanded the authority to use government purchase cards for the
acquisition of services and goods. Would not have provided any additional
training or safeguards to prevent the taxpayers from being ripped off, as
has happened too often in the past. While the number of rank-and-file
civilian acquisition personnel abusing their purchase card authority is
undoubtedly very small, their misconduct can injure the faith of the
American people in all federal employees.
e. Encouraging even more contracting out without public-private competition:
Would have extended current franchise fund pilot authority through FY
2005, even though franchise funds have traditionally been used to
contract for services without any public-private competition.
f.
Encouraging the use of risky share-in-savings contracts, which are proven
losers and completely anti-public-private competition: Would have allowed
all agencies to enter into risky share-in-savings contracts, i.e., borrowing
from contractors at high interest rates, for all manner of services. Would
have left agencies locked into long-term contracts that prevent shifting to
superior contract or in-house options. Would have taken no notice of the
fact that share-in-savings contracts, although in existence for more than
25 years, have not produced any savings, according to the senior most
Administration procurement official.
Moreover, the most recent federal experience with share-in-savings, at
the Department of Education, proved disastrous. According to the
agency’s Inspector General, “Performance measures were so inadequate
that it could not be determined if the contractor was in compliance with the
terms of the contract. There was no annual comparison of costs under the
agreement to an outside market to determine whether the agreement
actually provided the best value. Even more alarming, an overstated
baseline "create(d) a larger contractor payment than is actually earned."
The "success" of the Education share-in-savings contracts was used to
justify the pilot project authority. However, the IG's report shows that it is
just bad public policy. Finally, the use of share-in-savings is indisputably
Privatization of Federal Services
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anti-public-private competition and clearly promotes privatizing the jobs of
federal employees without giving them chance to compete. At the last
moment, as an amendment to a popular piece of E-Government
legislation, a controversial pilot program was established late in 2002 of a
handful of share-in-savings contract. Each and every one of these
experiments will be the subject of very thorough scrutiny because of the
serious threat each and every one of them poses to the interests of
taxpayers.
g. Encouraging the use of anti-taxpayer contracting mechanisms that allow
contractors to bill and bill without ever having to actually accomplish
anything: Would have authorized much greater use of controversial timeand-materials, and labor hour contracts, which pay the contractor on the
basis of his efforts, not his results, even when the work is so predictable
and commercial that it imposes little if any risk on the contractor. Timeand-materials, and labor hour contracts provide contractors with no
incentives to hold down costs and have a proven record of being rife with
waste, fraud, and abuse.
h. Reducing competition between contractors by eliminating safeguards for
taxpayers from a wide range of service contracts: Would have greatly
expanded the services and goods that could be procured as "commercial"
or "other transactions" and thus could be acquired under acquisition
authorities with greatly reduced scrutiny and oversight. According to the
experts, the arbitrary expansion of the definition of "commercial" and
"other transaction" authority to include services and goods that are not
actually subject to competitive market pressures would result in taxpayers
paying more than they do now for the same services and goods.
i.
Undermining the integrity of the contracting process by encouraging
conflicts of interest: Would have created a special exception to encourage
conflicts of interest for information technology services. Would have
allowed service contractors who perform architectural and engineering
services for information technology programs to subsequently bid on
contracts and subcontracts related to those information technology
programs.
j.
Preventing taxpayers from being made whole when contractors break
their contracts: Would have allowed contractors to break their contracts
and avoid paying the monetary damages they inflict on taxpayers.
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