What can be done to stop government officials from giving contracts to friends who own businesses?

Question

What can be done to make it more fair for all firms competing for the profitable contracting the government does. Often these contracts go to friends of high ranking officals, or companies who funded a campaign. Should businesses be able to buy clout and contracts from the government? Is this fair to the smaller companies who aren't capable of funding a campaign? What can be done to make this process fair?

Answer 1

laws need to be passed that will not allow anyone that contributes to a campaign to benefit from that contribution unless is proven to be the best bid on a contract and not awarded due to a contribution, also we need laws that will allow us to stop the lobbying efforts of large greedy corporations to benefit from policy made out of those efforts

Answer 2

Let's ask Diane Fienstien and see if she has any ideas.  The best way to find out how to stop this activity is to ask the person who takes advantage of it for their own benefit.

Answer 3

We need to make state and national campaigns publically, not privately, funded.  State elections would be paid for through state taxes, federal through federal taxes.

We need to have strict caps on the amount any company can spend on lobbying public officials.

Last, no one company in this country is the only one capable of doing anything.  Any company that has had current officials from higher levels of government, be they elected or appointed, as employees or had those same officials family members as employees should be allowed to bid for contracts.  The same holds true for officials or family members who are majority stockholders.  Bye, bye Halliburton.

Answer 4

Being a friend or relative of a government official should not disqualify anyone from putting in a bid.  Yes, I agree with you: there must be transparency in the procedure.