Beltway bandit is a term for private companies located in or near Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 whose major business is to provide consulting services to the US government. The phrase was originally a mild insult, implying that the companies preyed like bandits on the largesse of the federal government, but it has lost much of its pejorative nature and is now often used as a neutral, descriptive term.

The name comes from the Capital Beltway

Interstate 495 (Capital Beltway)

Interstate 495 is a Interstate Highway that surrounds the United States' capital of Washington, D.C., and its inner suburbs in adjacent Maryland and Virginia. I-495 is widely known as the Capital Beltway or simply the Beltway, especially when the context of Washington, D.C., is clear...

, the ring road that surrounds Washington. (The entire road is officially called Interstate 495, although the eastern half is cosigned with Interstate 95

Interstate 95

Interstate 95 is the main highway on the East Coast of the United States, running parallel to the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Florida and serving some of the most populated urban areas in the country, including Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore,...

, which traverses most of the East Coast.) The majority of private contractors are located, or at least headquartered, at intersections along this road in order to be close to federal agencies and legislators. There is a tendency for contractors for the various civilian departments and agencies to locate along the Maryland portion of the Beltway, while defense contractors locate nearer to the Pentagon, along the Virginia section.

Other uses

An early use of the term may have been from a description of thieves who took advantage of the newly-constructed Beltway to rob houses from their back yards, which were now exposed to the highway. Neighbors would not have seen them from the front yards, and by the time the police arrived, the thieves would have used the Beltway to escape to another state, when communications between Virginia and Maryland police departments was fairly rudimentary.

Beltway Bandits is the name of a women's competitive travelling ice-hockey program in the DC area. The team is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey League

Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey League

The Mid-Atlantic Women's Hockey League is the oldest continuously active women's ice hockey league in North America. This League is not a professional women's ice hockey. The MAWHL is an amateur hockey league and have three divisions allowing for differents levels of women's players in United...

.

It is the name of an instrumental piece of music by Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 on his "Jazz from Hell

Jazz from Hell

Jazz from Hell is a Grammy Award–winning instrumental album from Frank Zappa. It was released in 1986 by Barking Pumpkin Records and by Rykodisc .-Album information:...

" album.

External links

• http://www.ima.umn.edu/hpc/wkshp_abstracts/wallace1.html Talk Abstract: Life as a Beltway Bandit, from the Institute for Defense Analyses
• http://www.slanguage.com/washington.html Washington DC Slanguage. Defines of Beltway Bandits as consulting companies.
• http://www.baen.com/library/0671318411/0671318411__14.htm A Hymn Before Battle, by John Ringo. Beltway Bandit here refers explicitly to a consulting company.
• Beltway Bandits women's ice hockey program