Bureaucratic Dark Energy: How the Failure to Enforce the Anti-Deficiency Act's Prohibition on "Personal Services" Enlarges the Federal Bureaucracy via the Proliferation of Contractors

• Published in: Policy File 2017
• Main Author: Hanrahan, Robert J
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: Budgets/Expenditures; Competitive Enterprise Institute; Government; Labor force/Employment

There are thousands of felonies committed every day in Washington, D.C. Not in the places one might imagine, but in federal office buildings throughout the nation's capital. The crime? Circumventing the power of Congress and the president to control the bureaucracy. The U.S. civil service's growth is limited by the budgets enacted by Congress and executed by the president. But many federal agencies do an end run around any hiring freeze by hiring contractors instead of federal employees to perform government work. Bureaucracy expands rather than shrinks, congressional oversight is lost, ethical restrictions do not apply, and government expansion continues in defiance of the laws. In the federal government, this mechanism of expansion is illegal. So how can this be happening? Federal law generally prohibits federal agencies from employing contractors to augment the federal workforce. The prohibition on hiring contractors for their specific skills to fill ongoing federal jobs has been law since the 1880s. Without specific authorization from Congress, hiring contractors in this manner is a felony. But many agencies do it nonetheless, as these laws are nearly never enforced.