The New York Times wonders why the president believes that a wartime contracting commission and protection for contractor fraud whistleblowers would hinder his constitutional duty to faithfully execute laws. The [national defense authorization] bill included four important provisions that Mr. Bush decided he will enforce only if he wants to. The president said they impinged on his constitutional powers. We asked the White House to explain that claim, but got no answer, so we'll do our best to figure it out.

During his State of the Union address last night, President Bush tried to create the impression that he cares about wasteful pork spending and wants to reduce it by a lot and right away:

Elections are the time when politicians pay the most attention to people and issues, and therefore the best time to ask them questions about how they plan to govern. OMB Watch wants your help in figuring out the best questions on government transparency that can be put to the candidates. Take just a few minutes to answer our survey and vote on your five favorite questions on the issue of government transparency and openness. We will then share the top questions with the news media and other organizations that have direct contact with candidates. Government openness affects every issue from budget and taxes, to the regulatory process, to non-profit advocacy. The range of questions tries to reflect this breadth so check them and see which are most important to you. Take the Open Government: What We Need To Know Survey today.

Another unbelievable story on contracting in the Washington Post this morning. Walter Pincus reports that government officials (including Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office) testified before Congress that the Bush administration is unable to manage the enormous number of U.S. contractors currently working in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the end of September, there were over 196,000 contractor workers assisting the Department of Defense in the two war zones, and Defense Undersecretary Jack Bell stated that despite the crucial role these contractors play in the war effort, the Defense Department was "not adequately prepared to address this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors." The GAO also found not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars, a finding supported by Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission. This testimony was delivered at a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee yestereday afternoon. And it is more than simply related to ensuring efficient management of the war effort - there's a lot of money involved here too. Subcommittee Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) noted in a statement: Out of $57 billion worth of contracts for services and reconstruction work in Iraq, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has reported that more than $10 billion — or one-sixth of the total spent on contracts — is either questionable or cannot be supported because of a lack of contractor information needed to assess costs. To date, there are more than 80 separate criminal investigations into contracts totaling more than $5 billion. Here's a link to the committee page for the hearing where this testimony was heard, but it really won't do you much good as it doesn't have any testimony or information about the hearing other than who testified. Image by Flickr user jamesdale10 used under a Creative Commons license