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The GSA takes over ALL government purchasing [1]

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Date: 2025-03-25

The General Services Administration is now going to do all the purchasing the government does.

Instead of each agency having a budget to do their own purchasing, the GSA will do the purchasing for them and send the stuff over. Of course, this means they have to justify every single penny instead of having their own Inspector General keep an eye on things.

Donald Trump's executive order is called: Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement.

The cost saving by bulk purchasing for everybody will probably get cheaper prices on items. What about that radar at an FAA airport tower? That mass spectrometer for the physics lab? That uranium centrifuge at the Atomic Energy Commission? To think that GSA has experts in every field of science, finance, computer technology, and an infinite list of endeavors, is pure fantasy.

This will cost more, not less, and raise the frustration factor at agencies already reduced to skeleton operations by firings.

"It is time to return the General Services Administration to its original purpose, rather than continuing to have multiple agencies and agency subcomponents separately carry out these same functions in an uncoordinated and less economical fashion."

I'm not sure what brainiac came up with this idea, but the General Services Administration has operated just fine since 1949 with its current setup.

Strangely, the GSA is only given a cursory mention in Project 2025.

"Consolidating domestic Federal procurement in the General Services Administration --- the agency designed to conduct procurement --- will eliminate waste and duplication, while enabling agencies to focus on their core mission of delivering the best services for the American people."

Sure sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Just what we need to streamline things. But, don't they already have enough to do with managing the 360 million square feet of real estate the government has?

Apparently the new GSA can't keep track of the real estate either. They came up with a program called Space Match, that I wrote about, that is supposed to match the return to work in person employees and the rehires, to available workspace. It shows it doesn't work well when the program sends you to an out of business Subway shop.

Josh Gruenbaum, the head of the Federal Aquisition Service, told GSA employees last Thursday, "Over the coming months, we are going to ingest all domestic, commercial goods and services inside the GSA. We're not going to do all $900 billion, but we will do about $400 billion, so we are going to quadruple our size."

But the GSA, like all agencies now, is eliminating departments and firing employees. Instead, they're being replaced by an artificial intelligence bot, which was demoed on Thursday. Employees have been asked to find ways that AI could take over their work. Sure, that makes sense, make it possible for AI to take over your own job. Why don't you ask them to shoot themselves in their feet?

Why do I think that Jeff Bezos' Amazon will suddenly become a major procurement contractor?

The executive order gives agencies 60 days to let the GSA know how they're going to integrate with the changes. Within 90 days the administrator of the GSA has to work with the Office of Management and budget to get all the kinks worked out.

To go along with the executive order, there is a Fact Sheet called: President Donald J. Trump Eliminates Waste and Saves Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement.

Trump's good news is that the GSA, since he took office, has eliminated 6,000 contracts with suppliers. GSA and OMB are going to be buddy buddies. Trump's examples of savings are 22% on bandsaw blades and 30% on 50-in flat screen TVs.

The estimate that they make is that they will save only 10% over the wide range of purchases than they do already, or agencies do already. That means a savings of $50 billion. What they don't include is the time that agency employees have to work on requisitions and how GSA employees have to respond. Somehow I see that adding up to a lot more than the 10% savings.

Trump claims this is just one more example of how he's eliminating "bureaucratic bloat."

The last thing he pumps up is his Department of Government Efficiency saving $100 billion from "a combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions."

Seriously, this whole DOGE effort, if they had just concentrated on the defense budget, probably could have saved that $100 billion right there. Next time they want a fighter plane, how about a fixed contract price instead of cost overruns spiraling into the stratosphere? Everybody gets sloppy when they know they're going to get the money even with a bad product.

I know saving money is a great thing, but this will add another layer of bureaucracy that isn't needed. It will waste in the guise of eliminating it.

Just guess who's going to get all those lucrative government contracts now? Can we say campaign donors? Inauguration attendees? Trump hotel guests? Grifters anonymous?

To make my point about the Defense Department, Trump just unveiled the F-47 sixth generation fighter jet. He said "the generals" picked the name. Right. The contract was awarded to Boeing, not Lockheed. Boeing can't even build commercial airplanes without forgetting parts and testing. The FAA is, or was, breathing down their neck for shoddy work records, assembly and contractors. They are already years behind on the Starliner space capsule, with many problems that left astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for 9 months. They were awarded a $4.2 billion contract for the Starliner in 2014. That was supposed to be a fixed contract, but they've gotten another $2 billion dollars out of the government anyway. It's a space slush fund.

Making the GSA do more work with a lot fewer employees, and trying to replace functions with artificial intelligence, sounds like just one more Trump project headed for disaster. But he won't care. His friends will make oodles of money on those government contracts.

Who needs to save money if you make it look like you are?

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