Department of Government Efficiency - DOGE

#101
#101
Car wrap, Dale being available for events and other forms of advertising using his car or his likeness.

Advertising dollar requests go through the same approval and payment channels as buying a tent, just paid from a different funding kitty.
 
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#104
#104
DynaLo said:
I’m not going to dox myself to give you anything, but you can shove your BS claim as I’ve seen the actual contract info but here’s a news source discussing some of those contract years.

www.usatoday.com

National Guard leaving Dale Earnhardt Jr., Graham Rahal

Military branch cites need to cut costs
www.usatoday.com

2014: “The Guard said it spent $32 million as a sponsor for Earnhardt this season, which includes appearing as the primary sponsor on Hendrick Motorsports' No. 88 Chevrolet for 20 races.”

www.usatoday.com

National Guard's NASCAR deal leads to virtually no recruits

The National Guard spends big on a NASCAR sponsorship but draws few recruits.
www.usatoday.com

“The National Guard spent $26.5 million to sponsor NASCAR racing in 2012”

“Even though the Guard spent $88 million as a NASCAR sponsor from 2011 to 2013,”
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I understand the stories, and I understand how the military's recruiting budget works. The entire DoD also spends sponsorship money across all sports (you can see it any time you turn on a game). It's not relevant to your point saying that the government can willy-nilly sole source award for any amount. It's simply not true.

Can a sole source justification exceed some of the FAR-required contract maximums? In theory, yes, but it is near impossible to push those through all the (usually useless) layers of contracting, even in the DoD. At the end of the day, its a straight BS statement saying a sole source award can be for any amount while implying that it can basically be to anybody. At the very best it's an oversimplification, at worst it's conspiratorial sewage.

PS:
The SBA’s 13 CFR § 124.506 regulates sole source 8(a) procurements. The thresholds for competition are:
  • $4 million or less (or $7 million for manufacturing) for individually-owned 8(a) concerns.
  • $100 million for DOD 8(a) sole source awards.
  • $25 million for civilian 8(a) sole source awards.
The latest DoD data I can pull shows an average LIFETIME value of about $68M for 8(a) sole-source DoD awards, or $13M/year, with very few (if not zero) $100M+ justification-requiring awards. 8(a) businesses have the highest set aside thresholds, well beyond any other type of business.

Is there abuse and fraud in the government? Absolutely. But don't muddy up the waters with ridiculous bullshat to drive focus to non-problems and discredit any intention to fix things appropriately.
 
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#106
#106
Thunder Good-Oil said:
Musk is going to have influence and the ear of POTUS no matter what his role is. With DOGE it’s a lot more transparent than discussions in a cigar smoke filled room at Mar-a-Lago (assuming Trump allows cigars).
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My guess is Trump tires of Musk in less than a year. Ramaswamy seems to know to keep his opinion a little less public
 
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#107
#107
Unless the laws have changed drastically and I’d love the date on that change, the DoD doesn’t do advertising sponsorships as that verbiage gets struck out and changed in all the documents.

From goa.gov itself.

“The number of sole-source 8(a) contracts over $22 million grew steadily from six in fiscal year 2016 to 65 in fiscal year 2021. The collective value of these sole-source 8(a) contracts increased over the 6-year period, from $143.5 million to $3.4 billion. In total, DOD awarded 159 of these contracts from fiscal years 2016 through 2021.”

“Under the SBA's 8(a) program, contract awards may be competed among eligible 8(a) firms or awarded on a sole-source basis in certain instances. For example, 8(a) firms owned by Alaska Native Corporations, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian Organizations (for DOD only) can receive sole-source contracts for any dollar amount, while other 8(a) firms generally must compete for contracts valued above certain thresholds.”

You can say I oversimplified in my original wording as I posted headed out the door, but the fact remains that a sole source can be written and justified for obscene amounts of money and many times the “buddy system” is the beneficiary.
 
#108
#108
volfanhill said:
My guess is Trump tires of Musk in less than a year. Ramaswamy seems to know to keep his opinion a little less public
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I could totally see this. I’m fact, a year is probably being generous. We’ll see if Trump has changed his spots since the last go round.
 
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#109
#109
I promise you that DOGE has the likes of Booz Allen, SAIC, Leídos, L3, Accenture, etc sweating at night. The dirty secret is these guys do all the work we pay government employees to do.

The MIC is probably looking at every solution available to solve the problem.
 
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#111
#111
DC_Vol said:
I promise you that DOGE has the likes of Booz Allen, SAIC, Leídos, L3, Accenture, etc sweating at night. The dirty secret is these guys do all the work we pay government employees to do.

The MIC is probably looking at every solution available to solve the problem.
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you gotta think the outside/next set of potential contractors are salivating - "yeah, we can replace all that with AI for a 17 billion contract"
 
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#112
#112
Grand Vol said:
Move ALL government contracts to fixed price awards. The largest government contractors hate fixed price contracts which means that's probably the way we should go.

If you can't build it at what you said you could, you give up the right to finish the project and must turn over all work or fund it from internal means.

That would help make the bidding process more accurate and fair.
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The problem I would have with this is that the government loves to procure things “commercial off the shelf” but have requirements that make them all development projects.

Then they can perform design reviews and tell you to change all kinds of stuff which is more development.

I don’t see a good fix for that behavior besides properly labeling procurements.
 
#113
#113
Willy P said:
The problem I would have with this is that the government loves to procure things “commercial off the shelf” but have requirements that make them all development projects.

Then they can perform design reviews and tell you to change all kinds of stuff which is more development.

I don’t see a good fix for that behavior besides properly labeling procurements.
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Pulling ineffective procurement dweebs with no technical knowledge out of the technical process would help.
 
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#117
#117
rjd970 said:
Exactly. The MO for defense contractors these days are to bid low and win, then ECP the government to death during execution. Putting in an honest bid just doesn’t work anymore.
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Hopefully there is a new sheriff in town and those contractors will have to start being honest.
 
#124
#124
rjd970 said:
I don’t know enough of how the SpaceX contract is setup to really comment.

But in general the profit isn’t as much as you would think, and if they run over cost (in cost plus, but especially in fixed price) it gets even less. The fee is the profit, generally.

If a cost plus contract is $1M at cost with 10% fee, the contractor is only making $100K, the total price is $1.1M, but the $1M is only covering the contractor cost. If the contractor comes in at $2M cost, then they are only making 5% unless they get added fee on the extra cost.

Trust me, the contractors want to come in on cost and at schedule. Coming in under/over cost and early/late schedule is bad for both parties. Above all else, Wall Street values predictability with these contracts and the ability of the contractor to hit their targets (no pun intended). On the government side they don’t want to leave money on the table or go over.

I still contend this is largely the fault of the government, they don’t do a true evaluation of some of these contracts and it creates a situation where contractors have to underbid and then get labeled dirty because they are playing the game the government has setup.

The whole thing needs an overhaul.
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Bid a project and honor that bid. Period. I know how contracting works. I worked as an estimator when I was at UT for a construction company. What needs to be overhauled is the change order process (ya'll might call it something different now).

How is coming in under cost and early bad for both/either party?
 
#125
#125
SpaceCoastVol said:
Bid a project and honor that bid. Period. I know how contracting works. I worked as an estimator when I was at UT for a construction company. What needs to be overhauled is the change order process (ya'll might call it something different now).

How is coming in under cost and early bad for both/either party?
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Like someone else said, firm fixed price while allowing NO mods for additional expenses solves it too. Companies that fail to provide technically acceptable, compliant results should be barred from contracting.
 
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