Panel dismayed by rise in overseas Defense contracting

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee members on Thursday claimed that Defense Department payments for contractor services rose by 183 percent since 2000, while military pay has gone up only 5 percent.

They also complained that they have been unable to get detailed accounting on who the contractors are and what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We have more contractor personnel in Iraq than government employees," Rep. James Moran, D-Va., said. "Something's wrong. It's out of balance."

Moran, who chaired the hearing on defense contracting, said the budgeted cost of contracted services, which does not include procurement of weapon systems or equipment, is now $35 billion, an increase of $20 billion since the wars began.

Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., said an Army undersecretary could not tell him how many contractors were in Iraq and Kuwait. "In my mind, this was a deliberate attempt to keep that information from Congress," he said. Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., asked if the panel could get a detailed list of the contracts, cost and number of employees provided. The witness, Army Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson, said he could not account for all the Pentagon service contracts but promised to provide that information on Army contracts, which are a majority of the total. Moran requested that the data be provided before work started on the fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations.

Thompson said there were a total of 266,688 contractor personnel in the Central Command area -- which includes Iraq and Afghanistan -- as of mid-January. Of that, 41,000 were U.S. citizens and most of the others were "host nation citizens" who were hired in an effort to rebuild the local economy. Thompson, principal military deputy to the Army's assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, conceded that because of the post-Cold War cuts in the military, the Army did not have sufficient support personnel to handle the rapid growth in demand for services in Iraq or enough contracting personnel to supervise the outsourced work. But he insisted that the Army has made "steady and significant" progress in correcting the problems documented in a 2007 study by a high-level commission. The progress includes appointing newly authorized one- and two-star generals to head the Expeditionary Contracting Command located in Central Command and other contracting and acquisition oversight positions.

The Army also is well on the way to adding 1,400 military and civilian personnel to bring back under Army control a large number of services out-sourced during the buildup in Iraq, and is rebuilding its acquisition work force, he said. Young acknowledged that the reduction in acquisition personnel was partly due to a demand by former House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., to sharply reduce what he called "Pentagon shoppers." Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., asked Thompson if congressional "earmarks," which direct funding for specific projects not requested by the services are helpful or harmful. Thompson did not answer directly, but noted "the strategic objective is full and open competition" and the need for a product "has to start with a mission."