All they have to do is print as much money as they need to pay for current extravagant spending, and then back that up with a national debt that must eventually be paid for by the taxes on future generations of Americans. Our money used to be backed up by actual reserves of precious metals, specifically gold. The gold standard, or for that matter, any standard other than debt [borrowing], is preferable to giving any government carte blanche on spending. Our current economic woes as a nation are emerging as towns, cities, counties and states are wrestling with operational deficits.

The manipulation of our money supply by the Federal Reserve and Treasury, when devoid of a fixed precious metal standard such as gold, creates what appears as unlimited wealth. But the controlled manufacture of money by the Treasury in an environment that encourages unlimited debt will prove to be the foundation for a coming economic disaster of horrific magnitude.

The appearance of unlimited wealth is a beacon to unscrupulous manipulators and opportunists for taking advantage of this taxpayer-funded fools’ gold. Procurement and funding regulations within the government are extensive and all-encompassing, created to ensure that authorized procurements first pass a financial test certifying that funds are being correctly used for the purpose intended, and that they are available. To that end, Federal Acquisition Regulations [FAR] and the financial Anti-Deficiency Act have been enacted.

These regulations are primarily preventive in nature. Their object is to protect precious taxpayer funds, but as federal regulations are extremely tight on the front end in the life of a procurement transaction and its money trail, their actual in-process and year-end reporting are woefully inept. Government fund accounting is budgeting authorization/appropriation-oriented, meaning that government recordkeeping more resembles a checkbook than it does an accounting journal and ledger.

Yet, in spite of the mountain of complex regulations, procurement irregularities abound in a maze of bloated government bureaus where taxpayer money simply disappears. Expanding investigations at the General Services Administration, an organization specifically created to maximize government contract savings and uniformity, show that it is also guilty of violations.

In the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, a $5 million handgun procurement contract was to be sole sourced to Smith & Wesson, thereby excluding Austrian and Italian gun makers Glock and Beretta. Protests from Beretta forced TSA to reconsider, and the agency then followed government regulations.

The Boeing tanker deal sidestepped sensible, established procurement regulations that had they been adhered to, would have provided an astonishing savings in taxpayer funds by allowing a good, solid competitor, Airbus, to compete on an open bid basis. Boeing was to be protected via illegal sole sourcing.

Everyday purchases are continuously hampered by overly burdensome rules and regulations commonly described as “red tape.” To expedite federal procurement, especially for volume small ticket items, government offices have been encouraged to secure acquisitions through GSA, and recently via government authorized credit cards. Yet, as already pointed out, some GSA activities have succumbed to fraud. So has credit card use, the latter a growing problem.

Someone offered that if you’re going to steal, you should steal big. The biggest non-bid illegally sole sourced contracts in memory are of course the ones the Bush administration handed to Bechtel and Halliburton. And in this regard, the amount of taxpayer funds to both bribe and purchase the governments of other nations is also absolutely criminal.

We’ve launched an unconstitutional attack on a sovereign nation that didn’t attack us, and then arranged for big corporate money interests to make repairs for what we damaged. The American taxpayer will now be legislated into paying for it. As we continue to seek global togetherness by exporting our jobs via GAAT and NAFTA, we refuse to give foreign competition a real chance, as demonstrated by illegally sole sourcing Bechtel, Halliburton, Boeing and Smith & Wesson.

When both taxpayer funds and our national wealth could have been better served, and our global reach more meaningful, we refused this opportunity to deal fairly with Airbus, Glock, Beretta, and who knows who else.

<Theodore E. Lang>>

© 2003 THEODORE E. LANG All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.

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