Government Industry Archive

The Obama Administration and Congress passed the “Stimulus” bill in March. Since then the U.S. economy has continued to shed jobs and posted anemic if no growth. There has been criticism that the problem is the slow way the U.S. Government pushes money out the door with its complicated contracting process. There are also catches and rules on how the funds must be spent like the...

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One of the major complaints within the Federal Government about contracting is the length of time it takes to award a contract. This issue affects all types of contracts, whether it is is buying new jet fighter or pencils or hiring Scientific, Engineering, Technical and Analysis (SETA) contractors. The rules for a contract above a given size applied no matter what was being bought or how it...

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This is a fairly typical article that often appears in the local press describing how Congressman Dan Boren (D-OK) secured all this money for his district through daunt of hard work and sweat. Normally a lot of these are written when a funding bill passes. In this case Boren is talking about just the Authorization Bill which just passed the House, but still has to go through the Senate and...

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On top of the House adding money to the 2010 Defense Budget for more F-22 fighters, the Senate has also done the same. To add fuel to the fire the Senate kept alive the second engine for the F-35. The President and Secretary of Defense Gates’ had requested ending these programs in their proposed budget. The addition of this money actually brought a threat of a veto from Obama. Of...

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The Federal Government has a variety of laws favoring certain types of minority owned and small businesses. One of the largest groups receiving these preferences are those owned by Native American tribes and individuals. They receive consideration when they bid on contracts and as part of the small business participation as sub-contractors. One limitation on these companies, though, is that...

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President Obama approved the last supplemental defense spending law last night. The bill contains non-defense spending as well as also saving some programs recommended for termination by the Obama Administration. The original cost of the bill as requested by the Executive Branch was around $83 billion. The final version now passed by the House and Senate is up to $105 billion. It funds...

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This chart at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) shows the Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management System for a whole program’s life. It starts at program conception and then moves through demilitarization and disposal. As you can see it is a rather complicated process with several major reviews. At each review a series of documents must be...

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Japan has spent the better part of the last ten years trying to spend its way out of economic problems. The governments have used various stimulus and public works spending to try and get their economy to pick up from their last slide. Now with the worst recession in recent times weighing further on that economy the government is finding it harder to borrow money. There is now also the real...

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Two little articles on Sunday about areas that will be hard hit when their respective governments change tack on defense programs. There will be many more of these as the UK and American defense budgets begin their long winding down from the post-9/11 peaks. It is funny, other then the usual press releases there are hardly any news about areas gaining jobs when large defense contracts are...

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One of the core goals of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress is some sort of health care reform. The House and Senate are creating their own bills; in some cases several different ones from different groups of legislators. The primary goal of all this is to increase the number of people with insurance and try to reduce the overall cost of the system in the United States. The...

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