Five years ago President Barack Obama called federal non-competitive contracts "wasteful" and "inefficient," but last year his administration awarded more no-bid contracts than ever before, according to the
Washington Post.
The Post reported Monday that no-bid contracts were up almost 9 percent in 2012, amounting to $115.2 billion over the $105.8 billion worth of contracts awarded in 2009.
The Pentagon awarded the most contracts, doling out $100 billion. That's $10 billion more than the Defense Department handed out the year before. Lockheed Martin, Boeing. and Raytheon were among the top recipients, the Post noted.
The increase took place despite a decline of 5 percent overall in total contract spending government-wide, the Post noted.
“The pie is shrinking, but at the same time, the number of non-competitive awards has increased. That’s a bad combination,” Robert Burton, former acting administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy under George W. Bush, told the Post.
Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the Republican chairman of the House Small Business Committee, told the Post that the increase in non-competitive contracts “is proof that this administration is paying lip service to small business and competition.”
But Joe Jordan, head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, disagreed.
"While there is more work to be done, agency efforts have produced good results in our efforts to increase the use of competition," he insisted.
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