Take information gathered by Mother Jones, presented in the table on the right. General Electric, for example, which was prosecuted by the Justice Department for 27 cases of pollution for which it was held solely or jointly liable -- all while receiving almost $9.8 billion from government contracts between 1995 and 2000. Or Ford Motor Company, which received $442 million in federal dollars between 1995 and 2000, and had 292 OSHA violations considered "serious" by federal officials. Just as disturbing, Dynamics, the nation's fifth-largest contractor, was charged with falsifying employee time cards for a contract to test F-16 fighters, billing the Pentagon for thousands of hours of nothing. Dynamics paid the federal government nearly $2 million to resolve the charges. (For more such examples, see this searchable database compiled by POGO.)

Unfortunately, there are few consequences for this misbehavior, as these companies continue to rake in billions in taxpayer dollars. As POGO reports, only one of the 43 contractors that represent the top 45 percent of government contracts has been suspended or debarred from doing business with the government -- General Electric’s Aircraft Division was suspended after it pled guilty to diverting millions of dollars from the U.S. Foreign Military Aid Program to finance the sale of F-16 engines to Israel, but that suspension lasted only five days.

Current Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) standards require federal contracting officers to ensure that companies that do business with the government demonstrate a "satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics," excluding those unresponsible contractors from being considered for a federal contract. However, there are no guidelines to follow in making decisions on this ambiguous standard, nor is there a centralized system for contracting officers to consult for evidence of corporate wrongdoing.

Following the POGO report, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) committed to introducing legislation that would demand such a tracking system on contractor compliance, something she fought to create as a city council member in New York City, according to U.S. News and World Report. In its report, POGO specifically recommends creating a centralized database of information on corporate behavior, and requiring corporations to disclose any current suspensions or debarments, any litigation initiated against them on either the federal or state level that is either pending or has closed in the past three years, and any “Administrative Agreements” (made between the government and a contractor to compensate for misbehavior) they are currently implementing. This should include information about regulatory violations and fines paid.

Previously, the Clinton administration also sought to address this problem through a new “contractor responsibility” standard on December 20, 2001, clarifying that “integrity and business ethics” included compliance with tax, labor, employment, environmental, antitrust, consumer protection laws, and regulations. More specifically, the standard directed bidding companies to report any violations from the previous three years, and directed government contracting officers to consider this information in awarding contracts.

This may seem to be simple common sense. Yet large corporate interests, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, lobbied fiercely against the standard, which considering the damning evidence compiled by POGO, is hardly surprising. Rather than debate honestly, the Chamber argued in face of the facts that the standard would be used to create a “blacklist” -- a thought made more laughable given the government’s reluctance, documented by POGO, to suspend or debar contractors with long track records of lawbreaking. Nonetheless, it didn’t take much to convince the Bush administration, as it eagerly, and not surprisingly, overturned the contractor responsibility standard just two days after Christmas when Congress was on recess and no one was around to object. The administration has proven it is truly unwilling to make any demands on corporate interests.