The Scandal of Minority Contracting

Margarita Howard is the founder of the Florida technical services company HX5. The company has benefited from a federal program, known as 8(a), that gives federal contracts to companies owned by "socially and economically disadvantaged" individuals, which typically means racial minorities with insufficient wealth. Thanks to the 8(a) program, HX5 secured hundreds of millions of dollars of federal contracts with agencies from NASA to the Army Corp of Engineers.