A culture of cronyism and incompetence has pervaded the federal government since President Bush took office, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the Monitor yesterday. In a speech scheduled to take place at St. Anselm College in Manchester this afternoon, Clinton will outline a series of proposals designed to restore voters' "faith in government."

"There's been such a deterioration in our expectations about our government," Clinton, a New York senator, said in a telephone interview yesterday, on the eve of what her campaign is billing as a major policy address. "We cannot remain a strong leader in the world, nor can we tackle our challenges at home . . . if we don't have confidence that our government can actually perform."

Clinton reeled off a litany of what she described as recent government failures: the handling of Hurricane Katrina, no-bid contracts going to private companies for work in Iraq and the outsourcing of work to expensive contractors. In the past six years, the number of private contractors working for the government has increased by 2.4 million, Clinton said. The number of government contracts that are competitive, meanwhile, has plummeted. In 2001, 79 percent of government contracts were competitive; in 2005, that figure was 48 percent, she said.

"We outsource these jobs to the private sector, and we end up in many instances paying more money than we would if we had left the job in the public sector," Clinton said.

Cutting 500,000 contractors, she said, would save $10 billion to $18 billion annually. Clinton will also propose that "wherever possible," the government solicit multiple bids for projects. Competitive contracts, she said, would make the projects more transparent.

"If we'd had vigorous oversight and accountability, I don't think we'd be left with the terrible mystery of what happened to billions of dollars and many of the services that were supposed to be provided to our men and women in uniform," Clinton said.

Money aside, Clinton outlined steps to curtail cronyism.

Calling for an end to "the revolving door between government and lobbying shops here in Washington," Clinton said that she would ban her Cabinet officials from lobbying her administration after they leave office.

And she denounced what she described as the creeping influence of political ideology into some areas of government.

"We know that in many agencies, ideology has been permitted to trump evidence and even science," Clinton said. "The FDA, which has been the gold standard of drug safety and efficacy, has been subjected to a series of ideologically driven decisions. That shakes people's confidence."

Citing the case of former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, Clinton proposed establishing clear qualifications for political appointees. Critics assailed Brown's performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Brown eventually resigned.

In order to cultivate competent government employees, Clinton supports the creation of a "public service academy," modeled on the military service academies. "One of the problems we encountered in Iraq is that we don't have a civil service, a public sector employment pool that is really able and ready to take on some of the most challenging jobs that we face at home and in the world," she said.

Clinton frequently touts the accomplishments of her husband's administration on the campaign trail, and yesterday was no exception.

After lauding the performance of FEMA in the 1990s, Clinton described "the demoralization and the erosion of the competence and capacity of that agency."

With Bill Clinton in the White House, "we had built up an extraordinarily competent cadre of professionals in FEMA," she said. "This administration basically drove them out and used it to give jobs to political cronies."

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