Government Contracts One thing is true for most of us and it is if we keep going over budget in our household operations all the time, we would be in a lot of trouble indeed. This makes me wonder why the government seems to think nothing about going over budget and creating a huge financial hole for all of us. If the government didn’t go over budget with its contracts it seems to me companies would try harder to stay within budget, but it seems going over the allotted amount of cash and the time in which to perform the service has become part of the contract game and expected. There are just so many contracts which are incredibly over budget and mostly years late. It is amazing to me we can function this way at all. When a contract is given out for a service, there should be a penalty for going over budget and being late. Let’s look at some of these contracts. Take the Starliner rocket contract. The program is incredibly late. Sunita Williams, one of the stranded astronauts on the ISS was originally scheduled to fly on Starliner in 2018. We paid 4.2 billion dollars for this project and it is still having problems. Something is being said I never heard before, at that is Boeing actually lost money on this contract. It has been said 72 percent of government contracts have exceeded the time limit. The other part of the problem might be underestimating the cost of a project by a bidding company to get a contract knowing when they do, they can ask for more money. A site stated 84 percent of contract companies reported the jobs cost more than they thought. There could be one reason for this among many others and that is government interference after the job is started. When the government begins to demand changes to the project after it has been started, this can cause cost overruns. I read something once which I do not entirely agree with, but it is hard to dispute. An expert stated the federal government is now too large to run efficiently. That was almost ten years ago. Can you imagine what it must be like today? In a 2015 report stated a government contract for a project costing 1 billion dollars could end up costing double that by the time it is finished. One of the more outrageous things I heard about was big companies running over cost and time receiving bonus money from the government. CBS said in a headline posted on the internet for an article in 2023 the Pentagon was falling victim to price gouging by military contractors. I am not verifying the following figures, just stating I read them. It was said in 2001 140 billion dollars went to contractors, but by 2019 that figure was increased to 370 billion dollars. We know there could be some reasons for an increase over those years. We know weapon’s systems need to be updated and such, but there has been another problem which has crept up in some of these contracts, and they are weapon’s systems being purchased on the promise all the problems will be fixed after the purchased weapons are being used. This problem reared it ugly head during the purchase of a 13-billion-dollar aircraft carrier which had many problems one of which had to with electronic catapults which could only launch a few planes before overheating. Another problem was with a new stealth destroyer. It cost about 2 times the price of the current destroyers being used and after testing was found to be no more efficient than the current destroyers. We hardly ever take price into consideration. It is like the companies sell us a bill of goods and we bite. The Zumwalt destroyer was purchased and yet it is said it had no anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine torpedoes and no long-range air defense missiles. If this is true what the heck was the Navy thinking? The cost was said to be between 3.5 to 4.4 billion dollars each. The destroyer it was said to replace cost about 2 billion per ship. Sometimes the items purchased by the defense department were not tested sufficiently before being issued. When I was in the service it was said the M16 rifle failed in combat due to aluminum parts and overheating. Today I read critics saying it was not lubricated properly. The critics also say the rifles were not cleaned properly. I had one in basic training and it was very cold. The lieutenant in charge ordered us to slap the fiberglass stock very hard at shoulder arms. He said don’t worry you can’t break anything. I did and the stock shattered. I went to him and he just ignored me and left. I had to turn in my M16 for a new one. This problem with the cold should have been known about and fixed. A friend of mine stationed in Vietnam told me they were ordered against buying sidearms, but many of the soldiers he knew did it anyway, because they knew their M16 was unreliable. While there are many defense department problems with devices we purchased, those devices ranging from aircraft carriers to side arms, there are other agencies that have problems and they range to almost every government agency, not just the prominent ones like NASA with its rockets and such. I hate to say this, but you can bet a big NASA contract will go over budget and be late.
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