The New York Times published an unflattering article yesterday on the practice of the government contracting out services to private companies. The article examined the findings of a study done by a nonprofit organization called the Project of Government Oversight, and found,

in 33 of 35 occupations, the government actually paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost government employees to perform comparable services. On average, the study found that contractors charged the federal government more than twice the amount it pays federal workers.

No surprise here — We’ve just finished a decade of reckless and wasteful spending that has been symbolized by the no-bid cost-plus tax-free contracts of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, a congressional panel looked at the results of this practice and estimated that

the U.S. has wasted or misspent between $31 billion and $60 billion contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, or as much as one out of every four dollars spent on wartime contracting in the past decade.

Meanwhile, the very same Republicans who voted for this excess that led us into the deficit now act like they are the financially responsible ones and refuse to do anything to help the country recover.