When Trump came into office and pledged to hire 7,500 more Border Patrol agents, Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) hired a private contractor called “Accenture” to do the recruiting and hiring. But Accenture’s performance was so bad even Republicans couldn’t stomach the poor results, and its contract was terminated in December. Under this contract CBP got 22 new employees, at a cost to taxpayers of $297 million. Read story here.
Republicans prattle endlessly about running government “like a business,” eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” etc. One of their key strategies is outsourcing government work to private contractors, which many Democrats view as a ploy to (a) make life miserable for government workers, and (b) fatten the wallets of their business friends.
These experiments often fail, and sometimes have grotesque results. For example, when George W. Bush invaded the wrong country after 9/11/01, ultimately costing 4,496 American soldier lives, U.S. taxpayers paid mercenaries over $100,000 a year, mostly to guard installations, while Army grunts being paid a small fraction of the “private contractor” salaries did the hard fighting. The main beneficiary of this arrangement was a company known as “Blackwater,” started by Eric Prince, brother of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos.
(“Blackwater” still exists, but eventually was sold to an investor group, and underwent several name changes in an attempt to erase the stain left by atrocities committed by its “private contractors.” Prince was already rich, and Blackwater made him much richer, at the expense of American taxpayers and murdered Iraqi civilians. His sister married into the billionaire DeVos family, co-founders of Amway.)
If only this business had been run like a business. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/accenture-staff-circulating-petition-to-dump-border-patrol-pact
Employees of the business refused to do the work the corporation needed them to do. The company lost the 5 year $297 million dollar contract because of work malfeasance. The federal government is likely to claw back the $13.5 million that was paid.
The American government has always depended on contractors to do work for the government. Ever since the beginning of the republic there have been contractors. Sometimes it is simply to keep some companies running like cannon manufactures. Yes, there is the Republican mantra of running government like a business and that work should be contracted out to private contractors. Democratic politicians have their favorite contractors as well, sometimes the same as Republicans. In any case this is a case of fraud to the American tax payer. The source of the fraud though appears to be some folks that have liberal and democratic ideas and did not want to do the work the American tax payer had paid them to perform.
PS Accenture had 41 billion in US income in 2018 and has a ton of contracts with the US government which should all be terminated if one reads what Roger Rabbit presents and do not do any further research. Of course fairness maybe a fading American and Democratic value.
You’re blaming this boondoggle on Democrats and liberals? Really?