Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Spending Adv. – I/L – No Oversight

Privatizing our military doesn’t save money – their wages are higher, and they have no incentive to keep costs down
Isenberg 6 (David, member of British American Security Information Council, http://basicint.org/pubs/Papers/PMC’s0603.pdf) GAT

Interestingly, though it is commonly asserted that the use of PMC’s has grown because they are far more cost-effective than the use of large standing military forces, with all their attendant overhead costs (recruiting, retention, training, and equipping, benefits) there is actually very little empirical evidence to confirm it. One academic wrote: Confronting the problem of controlling private contractors requires challenging a common myth – that outsourcing saves money. This philosophy stems from a wide craze of privatizing government services that began long before President Bush took office. But hiring private employees in Iraq at pay rates several times more than what soldiers make, plus paying the overhead at the private firms, has never been about saving money. It’s more about avoiding tough political choices concerning military needs, reserve call-ups and the human consequences of war. Writing in the New Yorker Magazine, James Surowiecki notes: Effective as outsourcing can be, doing things in-house is often easier and quicker. You avoid the expense and hassle of haggling, and retain operational reliability and control, which is especially important to the military. No contract can guarantee that private employees will stick around in a combat zone. After the Iraq war, some contractors refused assignments to dangerous parts of the country. That left American troops sitting in the mud, and without hot food… Outsourcing works well when there’s genuine competition among suppliers; that’s when the virtues of the private sector come into play. But in the market for big military contracts the bidders tend to be the usual few suspects, so that the game resembles the American auto or steel industries before Japan and Germany became major players: more comfortable than competitive. Sometimes the lack of competition is explicit: many of the contracts for rebuilding Iraq were handed out on a no-bid basis. And many of them are “cost-plus” contracts. This means that the contractors’ profit is a percentage of their costs, which gives them an incentive to keep those costs high. That’s hardly a recipe for efficiency or rigor.”

PMC’s waste money
AP 7 (Feb. 15 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17168266/ TBC 6/25/10)

$5 billion in bad paperwork According to their testimony, the investigators: Found overpricing and waste in Iraq contracts amounting to $4.9 billion since the Defense Contract Audit Agency began its work in 2003, although some of that money has since been recovered. Another $5.1 billion in expenses were charged without proper documentation. Urged the Pentagon to reconsider its growing reliance on outside contractors to run the nation's wars and reconstruction efforts. Layers of subcontractors, poor documentation and lack of strong contract management are rampant and promote waste even after the GAO first warned of problems 15 years ago.

Spending Adv. – I/L – Hidden Costs

And, we spend almost 300 million dollars a year on one security firm alone

Scahill 7 (Jeremy, Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater, The Independent, Aug 10, http://www.uruknet.info/?p=35239 ) ET

The single largest U.S. contract for private security in Iraq was a $293 million payment to the British firm Aegis Defence Services, headed by retired British Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, who has been dogged by accusations that he is a mercenary because of his private involvement in African conflicts. The Texas-based DynCorp International has been another big winner, with more than $1 billion in contracts to provide personnel to train Iraqi police forces, while Blackwater USA has won $750 million in State Department contracts alone for "diplomatic security."
And, the pentagon spends a ton of money on contractors

Overall, the industry is huge and growing, grossing over $100 billion annually worldwide, operating in over 50 countries. By far, the Pentagon is their biggest client, and in the decade leading up to the Iraq War, it contracted with over 3,000 PMCs, and now many more spending increasingly larger amounts. A single company, Halliburton and its divisions grossed between $13 - $16 billion from the Iraq War, an amount 2.5 times America's cost for the entire Gulf War. The company profits handsomely because of America's commitment to privatized militarization. More about it below. Since 2003, Iraq alone represents the "single largest commitment of US military forces in a generation (and) by far the largest marketplace for the private military industry ever."

Congressional studies conclude that the expense is much bigger than PMCs are worth

Lendman 10 (Stever, MA @ Harvard, Steve Lendman Blog, jan 19-10) ET

According to a September 21, 2009 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, as of June 2009, PMCs in Afghanistan numbered 73,968, and a later year end 2009 US Central Command figure is over 104,000 and rising. The expense is enormous and growing with CRS reporting that supporting each soldier costs $1 million annually, in large part because of rampant waste, fraud and abuse, unmonitored and unchecked. With America heading for 100,000 troops on the ground and more likely coming, $100 billion will be spent annually supporting them, then more billions as new forces arrive, and the Iraq amount is even greater - much, or perhaps most, from supplemental funding for both theaters on top of America's largest ever military budget at a time the country has no enemies except for ones it makes by invading and occupying other countries and waging global proxy wars.
And, contractors cost so much the dod chairman thinks it can’t be justified

Scahill 7 (Jeremy, Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater, The Independent, Aug 10, http://www.uruknet.info/?p=35239 ) ET

At present, an American or a British Special Forces veteran working for a private security company in Iraq can make $650 a day. At times the rate has reached $1,000 a day; the pay dwarfs many times over that of active duty troops operating in the war zone wearing a U.S. or U.K. flag on their shoulder instead of a corporate logo. "We got [tens of thousands of] contractors over there, some of them making more than the Secretary of Defense," House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Penn.) recently remarked. "How in the hell do you justify that?" In part, these contractors do mundane jobs that traditionally have been performed by soldiers. Some require no military training, but involve deadly occupations, such as driving trucks through insurgent-controlled territory.