Government contracting is an easy but elusive target

Defence procurement spending then fell under Barack Obama and rose during Donald Trump's first term, following the usual partisan pattern, but over the past five years overall spending has remained high despite a slight pullback by the Defence Department

- Justin Fox

Of all the things Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is trying to do in Washington, putting the squeeze on government contractors is generating the least popular backlash. There's a widespread and seemingly bipartisan belief that, as tech entrepreneur and Obama administration veteran Josh Miller put it on X a few weeks ago, "the most wasteful work & spending" in government is "done by for-profit contractors & consultants." The Trump administration agenda for federal procurement is certainly ambitious. DOGE has been cancelling contracts right and left. The new federal acquisition service commissioner at the General Services Administration has been pressing the biggest contractors to justify their work and is acting to centralise federal procurement at the GSA in hopes that this will drive down costs. The administration has already cancelled several Biden administration executive orders related to contracting and aims to overhaul and slim down the Federal Acquisition Regulation that governs procurement. "This is a sea change of monumental consequences," said James F. Nagle, a government-contract-law expert at Smith Currie Oles in Seattle and author of "A History of Government Contracting."