Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Spending Adv. – I/L – Hidden Costs

And, officials in charge of the contractors lie to the federal government- decreasing effectiveness of the contractors and wasting tax payers money

Schulman 9 (Daniel, assistant editor at Columbia Journalism Review, Sep 1-9, Mother jones) ET

Brian's letter suggests that Wackenhut Vice President Sam Brinkley, who testified before a Senate panel in June about ArmorGroup's performance of the embassy contract, may have misled Congress. Despite Wackenhut Vice President Sam Brinkley's sworn Senate testimony that "…the Kabul contract has been fully-staffed since January 2009…" the truth is that chronic understaffing of the guard force continues to be a major problem. And evidence suggests Mr. Brinkley knew that. Around March, according to numerous participants, he was confronted by some 50 guards at Camp Sullivan who complained to him directly about a severe, ongoing guard shortage. Then, in an April 2009 memo to a State Department official, U.S. Embassy Kabul guard force Commander Werner Ilic reported that guard shortages had caused chronic sleep deprivation among his men. He described a situation in which guards habitually face 14-hour-day work cycles extending for as many as eight weeks in a row, frequently alternating between day and night shifts. He concluded that "this ultimately diminishes the LGF's [Local Guard Force's] ability to provide security." The contract with the State Department specifies that guards may not be on duty for longer than 12 consecutive hours. Interviewees and documents reveal that short-staffing frequently results in the denial of contractually guaranteed leave and vacation, and that those who do not comply are threatened with termination or actually fired. But criticisms of failing to meet manpower obligations are nothing compared to the bacchanalian activities ArmorGroup's personnel were allegedly engaged in.

Spending money on contractors lie about everything- even numbers of people who they trained

Engelhardt 9 (Tom, Fellow @ Nation Institute, teaching fellow @ berk, Jan 11-9, Tom Dispatch)

The problem is not simply that the Bush administration skimped on aid, but that it handed it over to for-profit contractors. Privatization, as is now abundantly clear, enriches only the privateers and serves only their private interests. Take one pertinent example. When the inspectors general of the Pentagon and State Department investigated the U.S. program to train the Afghan police in 2006, they found the number of men trained (about 30,000) to be less than half the number reported by the administration (70,000). The training had lasted eight weeks at most, with no in-the-field experience whatsoever. Only about half the equipment assigned to the police -- including thousands of trucks -- could be accounted for, and the men trained were then deemed "incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work."
We waste tons of money on contractors

Engelhardt 9 (Tom, Fellow @ Nation Institute, teaching fellow @ berk, Jan 11-9, Tom Dispatch)

The American privateer training the police -- DynCorp -- went on to win no-bid contracts to train police in Iraq with similar results. The total bill for American taxpayers from 2004 to 2006: $1.6 billion. It's unclear whether that money came from the military or the development budget, but in either case it was wasted. The inspectors general reported that police incompetence contributed directly to increased opium production, the reinvigoration of the Taliban, and government corruption in general, thoroughly subverting much ballyhooed U.S. goals, both military and political.
Outsourcing makes the military less cost effective- it’s a bad policy

Hedahl 9 (Marc, Captain USAF, http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE05/Hedahl05.html) ET

It seems that there are, however, three reasons that one might regard a particular act of outsourcing a bad idea. The most frequently discussed reasons are economic. If it were more expensive to outsource a particular function, there would be one good reason not to do it. However, the ultimate goal of our military is not merely to be as cost effective as possible, so one could also argue that a particular type of outsourcing is problematic because of other direct consequences on the military mission. For example, one could argue that although it may be more cost effective to outsource certain military logistical functions, the impact to military effectiveness makes this a bad policy. Finally, one could argue that a particular act of outsourcing was misguided because of the long-term impacts to the profession of arms itself.[12]

Spending Adv. – Impact – Housing Module (1/3)

Dollar for dollar, social spending generates more jobs that are better-paying
Garrett-Peltier 10 (Heidi, research fellow at PERI at Univ. of Mass., http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0310garrett-peltier.html) GAT

The United States is currently preparing to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan by summer 2010. Military contractors, deeply integrated into the U.S. economy, will continue to prosper and profit from increased military spending resulting from this surge of troops. At a time when unemployment in the domestic economy remains near 10%, it may seem convenient to fall back on the principle of military Keynesianism: War is good for the economy. John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose work has once again become popular in the wake of this most recent economic crisis, advocated increased government spending to lift an economy out of recession or depression. When consumers and businesses slow their spending, the government can step in to increase demand for goods and services so that businesses can continue to produce and people can remain employed. This fiscal stimulus could take the form of infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, or other productive endeavors. By this logic, military spending can lift an economy out of recession by creating demand for goods and services provided by military contractors, such as the production of tanks and ammunition or the provision of security services. Advocates of this strategy point not only to the widespread employment created by military spending, but also claim that military spending creates well-paying, stable jobs. It is true that military spending creates jobs throughout the economy, and that many of those jobs are well-paying. But at a time when our jobless rate is high, infrastructure is crumbling, and global climate change is becoming an increasingly urgent matter, we must ask whether military spending is truly a solution to our economic woes or whether we might be able to create more jobs in productive areas that also help us meet longer-term goals. In a recent paper that I co-authored with Robert Pollin, we show that dollar per dollar, more jobs are created through spending on clean energy, health care, and education than on the military. Further, we show that more middle-income and well-paying jobs are created in all of these areas. For each $1 billion of spending, over 17,000 jobs would be created in clean energy, close to 20,000 in health care, and over 29,000 in education. That same $1 billion would create only 11,600 jobs as a result of military spending. If we look at well-paying jobs, those that pay over $64,000 per year, these alternative domestic spending areas also outperform military spending. The same $1 billion would create 1,500 well-paying jobs in clean energy and just over 1,000 in the military—clean energy creates 50% more good jobs than military spending. Education, which is labor-intensive and creates many well-paying jobs per dollar of expenditure, creates close to 2,500 jobs paying over $64,000—that’s 2.5 times as many as the military.

Military spending generates fewer jobs than social spending
Gold 2 (David, Prof. of International Affairs at New School Univ, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Military_Budget/MilitaryBudget_Economy.html) GAT

Military spending represents a direct demand by the government for products and services. An increase in military spending brings forward an increase in production and employment, and as military-industry workers spend their higher income, it generates further increases in jobs and income. The issue for debate, however, is not whether an increase in military spending stimulates employment and purchasing power, because of course it does, but whether military spending does so more effectively than other forms of government or private spending. Using a variety of methods, and covering different periods of time, researchers have found that spending on the military generates fewer jobs than spending the same amount of money on a wide range of alternatives. This conclusion is strongest when the military budget emphasizes weapons purchases and development, which is the case at present. For example, the Congressional Budget Office recently found that every $10 billion spent on weapons generates 40,000 fewer jobs than $10 billion spent on civilian programs. These numbers are not large, given the amount of unemployment in the economy. But they are important in the current situation, since a large part of the military buildup was financed by cutting civilian spending. Looking at its impact on jobs, it is hard to justify military spending as a means of stimulating the economy. The ability of military spending to stimulate demand and employment was probably greater in the 1950s than it is today. Weapons production was more jobs-intensive than it is now. Moreover, the economy was in greater need of the added stimulation that military purchasing power could provide; today, with growth in government social spending, and with the tremendous growth of credit over the last several decades, our problems are not lack of overall purchasing power. Current problems lie more in the area of innovation and investment, and inequalities of income and power- problems that high levels of military spending can only worsen.