President's Column - Shadow Government: The Real Cost Of Doing Business

Consevatatives complain about the size of government, how it has become bloated and intrusive. They pontificate, moralize and rant about how many government bureaucrats spend countless billions of dollars on useless government programs that impose needless burdens on the American public. Of course the American public of which they are referring is business, usually big business. These same defenders of freedom have no problem with government interfering in people’s personal lives such as not banning abortion or same sex marriage.

The government programs they don’t like are the Social programs, such as Medicare, Social Security, and any benefits for the poor or middle class citizens. Tax breaks for the rich and corporations is good, benefits for the lower classes is bad and budget busting. These smaller government gurus would have you believe that having federal employees doing the work is a tax burden but having private industry, despite the exorbitant costs, doing the work stimulates growth and bolsters the economy. But the myth of cost saving by contracting out is a subject for another time; this commentary is about the real size of the federal “government “and why they don’t want you to know it.

The gurus of smaller government and less intrusion in the workplace have attained Mecca in this Administration; contractors have taken over the work of the federal government in epic proportions. Contractors are running the majority of programs in the Defense Industry; this is in addition to those who make the equipment and armament for the military. I previously reported that 48,000 private soldiers working for 181 military firms are deployed in Iraq alone. Plus thousands of civilians provide the food and laundry and other services for our fighting troops in those skirmishes in the Middle East.

But that just barely scrapes the top of the scab, there are presently 1,872,000 federal civil servants (that’s your everyday government bureaucrat) and there are 7,634,000 contract jobs and additional 2,892,000 grant jobs. That totals 10,526,000 non-federal employees as opposed to 1,872,000 feds. The fact is that there are five contractor employees for every one federal employee. This is an increase of 2,498,000of non- federal employee jobs since 2002. Then the numbers were 5,168000 contract positions and 2,860, 000 grant positions.

The statistics and information is derived from the research conducted by Paul Light, a New York University professor and principal investigator of the Organization Performance Initiative, who defines "shadow government" as “"private industry contractors working on behalf of the federal government." He projects that the number of contractors in the shadow government will climb to 10 to 12 million within 10 years. He states that his calculations are only rough estimates of government size because “contractor and grantees do not keep count of their employees.”

It is virtually impossible to obtain an accurate number from the federal government, even though one would think they are necessary for budget purposes each year. This Administration hides the true figures because; as in previous administrations they want to project a leaner more efficient government. But those in smaller government camp do know and are silent because they want to retain the right to rail against “big government” and government intrusion.

We simple civil servants will have to endure these slings and arrows because not many are on our side. It has been that way since the first bureaucrat was issued a quill pen and black ink, the red ink can later, But take heart, fellow feds , you can be like the Winking Parrott and say with pride, “YOU KNOW!”