"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have."

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Obama Politicizes Government Contracts

I was appalled -- but not surprised -- when I read this article from The Wall Street Journal yesterday. The gist of it is that Obama is about to sign an executive order reversing a 70-year-old government policy. This new order will require all private companies and their officers to list their political donations as a condition to bidding for government contracts.

This is called using the power of the government to silence your political opponents. Companies have two choices: donate to Republicans (or conservative third-party groups) and lose out on all government contracts, or protect their livelihoods and don't give any money to Republican candidates. Oh yeah, and guess who doesn't have to disclose their donations? That's right. Unions, which donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.

Thanks to Obama, no longer will we have a federal contract system based on best value and best quality. Now politics will decide who gets what contract. That may be good for Obama's re-election campaign, but it's not very good for our country.

It is increasingly difficult for me to understand how someone who genuinely cares about the future of our country can support this radical leftist, this partisan hack who now occupies the White House.

2 comments:

US Chamber Janitor said...

How about you can't get a government contract if you've given campaign contributions? Or similarly, you can't make campaign contributions if you have a government contract?

Natedawg said...

I don't agree that companies that make campaign contributions should be banned from government contracts. I don't think my company's contributions are any of the government's business. I see it as a free speech issue. But if such a ban were applied fairly across the board, it would still be better than what we're going to have, which is a partisan administration deciding what company gets a contract based on whether they like their campaign contributions or not.