The Latest War Will Not Be Free

Townhall.com ^ | September 28, 2014 | Steve Chapman

[ChildOfThe60s]

I always wondered what that meant, “War On Poverty’’. What does that mean, you shoot poor people?

That's pretty much how it is playing out in cities like Chicago. Except that it's Dem constituents doing the shooting of the poor people.

[DuncanWaring]

Our last national balanced budget was during the Eisenhauer administration - 1956 or 1957.

[DuncanWaring]

Our last national balanced budget was during the Eisenhauer administration - Fiscal Year 1956, if I recall correctly.

[Myrddin]

I've been a DoD contractor since 1991. The nature of the contracting process has changed since about 2010. No more awards with an identified allocation of money to do the work. It is now IDIQ...Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity. We spent 3 1/2 years on a proposal to keep the contract that we had been doing for 18 years. We won. Sort of. The money isn't really there. It's an upper bound (no lower bound) against which the customer can create "task orders" and require a fire, fixed price bid. After burning the effort for yet another bidding process, there is a new layer of task order monitoring to ensure the work is completed with the fixed amount allotted. Even when the "bid" is accepted, there is no certainty that the customer can actually get the money from the "government" to pay for the labor. The net effect is all work is being pushed to be performed by the lowest bidder. We can't hire competent help at the price point that the government is willing to pay. Task orders and projects are running off the rails.

I just returned home to Pocatello after 5 years away from my family in San Diego. I was covering software development, hardware development, project management, system administration, design and architecture meetings with the customer, security lockdowns and interviewing new candidates. My work required 40 to 70 hours a week. I was paid for 40 hours as a salaried employee. I just looked at my ADP pay check stubs online. I discovered they have a log of actual hours submitted. In two consecutive timecard submissions I had 105 hours and 140 hours. That's 245 hours worked for 160 hours of pay. So why does that matter? I'm home because "I'm too expensive". I'm doing the work of 10 people that we can't hire for lack of skills offered at burger flipper salary offerings. As of yesterday, I'm not a full time salaried employee for the first time since May 1980. I was moved to part time, 12 hours a week. Lovely. That won't pay the bills. I have an interview tomorrow at 1 PM. My days of depending on DoD contracting as a steady line of work need to be retired.

[jmacusa]

LOL!!!!

[Stentor]

Endless war means endless taxes.

Everyone knows that Fedbucks are infinitely reproducible without repercussion. /S

[1010RD]

Outstanding.

[1010RD]

As important as defense is, we lose the country when Americans stop believing in a republic and start believing they can vote themselves something from nothing.