Taking Over Everything

Posted by David Boaz

“My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy,” President Obama sighed to George Stephanopoulos during his Sunday media blitz.

Not every sector. Just

This president and his Ivy League advisers believe that they know how an economy should develop better than hundreds of millions of market participants spending their own money every day. That is what F. A. Hayek called the “fatal conceit,” the idea that smart people can design a real economy on the basis of their abstract ideas.

This is not quite socialism. In most of these cases, President Obama doesn’t propose to actually nationalize the means of production. (In the case of the automobile companies, he clearly did.) He just wants to use government money and government regulations to extend political control over all these sectors of the economy. And the more political control achieves, the more we can expect political favoritism, corruption, uneconomic decisions, and slower economic growth.

Corruption Rewarded in Government

Posted by Chris Edwards

In Downsizing the Federal Government, I discussed some of the corruption surrounding former Senator Ted Stevens:

Another example of abuse engineered by Senator Stevens involves Alaska Native Corporations. Because of rule changes slipped in by Stevens, these shadowy businesses based in his state are allowed to circumvent normal federal procurement rules and win no-bid contracts. The result of such loopholes is that taxpayers do not get value for their money. For example, in 2002 a half billion dollar contract for scanning machines at U.S. border crossings was given to a native corporation with little experience in the technology, instead of established leaders in the field who were not allowed to bid.

The Washington Post did a good job of bringing the scandal of ANCs to light a few years ago. Did the spotlight on ANCs and connections to disgraced Senator Stevens convince Congress to move ahead with reforms? Hardly. From Government Executive today:

In fiscal 2008, companies owned by Alaskan regional and tribal corporations earned a record $5 billion in federal contracts, nearly 10 times the $506 million they earned in fiscal 2000 … ANCs earned two-thirds of the $24 billion they accumulated in prime contracts since fiscal 2000 through the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development program … Federal acquisition specialists said the data shows that the program, which was designed to help small and disadvantaged companies, has been undermined by a system that rewards companies that earn hundreds of millions in annual revenue.

In the story, Steven Schooner, of George Washington University, summed up the scam well: “The ANC program, as currently implemented, is a blunt instrument that distorts the procurement system, injects well-founded cynicism into the process, and reinforces the belief that government procurement is more about allocating political spoils than ensuring that the government receives value for taxpayer money.”

President Obama has promised procurement reform. He could start be eliminating ANCs and other forms of procurement favoritism.