“Bull. 10 toilet seats could have been machined out of plastic...a polyolefin or polyamide or polyoxymethylene for hundreds of dollars. It would have taken a student draftsman 10 minutes to design and draw it up for machining. It’s a toilet seat fer cryin’ out loud!”
OK who would make those toilet seats ? Who would do the required drawings and at what cost to the government....NO CONTRACTOR WORKS FOR FREE. How long would it take to get them on contract and would that contract have to go out to competetive bid ? Would the losing bidder challenge ?? Is whoever making the toilet seats an approved contractor who can actually do work for the DOD ? If the toilet seats fail who is responsible for replacing them ? How much would the contractor charge to set up the tooling to turn out only a few of these toilet seats ??
For good or bad, there are many considerations that go into procurement decisions. Some of them seem stupid initially but they make sense when you look at the bigger picture.
Geez...people like you think every damned thging done for the government has to 100 extra layers of complexity added to it just because it's 'for the government'! Big friggin'deal. There's not a single successful business in this country that would ever do business the way the governemnt does.