GovernmentExecutive.com

A House subcommittee has introduced a bill that would effectively end the Bush administration's already weakened competitive sourcing initiative.

In a markup of its fiscal 2009 appropriations bill, the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee approved on Tuesday a one-year moratorium on any new A-76 competitions, leaving the decision to continue the public-private job competition program up to the next administration.

"The provision halts this administration's controversial and detrimental federal workforce program until the next administration has had an opportunity to consider and implement its own workforce policies," said subcommittee Chairman José Serrano, D-N.Y.

The bill has the support of federal labor unions who have lobbied against competitive sourcing by arguing that it amounts to little more than a thinly veiled outsourcing and privatization agenda.

"I think a governmentwide suspension of A-76 makes a lot of sense," said Randy Erwin, legislative director for the National Federation of Federal Employees in Washington. "The competitive sourcing program has not exactly been a glowing success, and who knows if the next president is going to want to continue what has been a very controversial program."

The bill provoked a strong rebuke from the Bush administration, which has made competitive sourcing a top priority of its management agenda.

"A moratorium would inappropriately interfere with agencies' ability to manage resources in the most cost-effective manner," said Robert Shea, associate director for administration and government performance at the Office of Management and Budget. "Competitions completed across government since fiscal 2003 are expected to produce more than $7 billion in savings, the majority of which are expected within the next five years. Most of these savings will be achieved by federal employees who have fared well under public-private competition by creating 'most efficient organizations' to eliminate inefficiencies from the federal workplace."

While fatal for the Bush administration's A-76 agenda, the language would not actually kill competitive sourcing; only permanent authorizing legislation would end the program forever.

"This language would just put the program in a wait-and-see position until the next administration can develop its policies on the federal workforce," Erwin said.

Serrano's bill is the latest and most aggressive step by Democrats to drive the final nail into the coffin of one of the administration's signature domestic policies.

In 2007, Congress passed a sweeping number of reforms designed to incapacitate the program. Legislation, drafted in part by Serrano, excluded health care and retirement benefits from the cost comparison process and established protest rights for the federal team.

A proposal to repeal those two measures was included in the president's 2009 budget recommendation.

Also signed into law last year were moratoriums on all competitions at the Labor Department, Bureau of Prisons, Federal Prison Industries Inc., Army Corps of Engineers, Forest Service, the Coast Guard's National Vessel Documentation Center and for positions related to the Office of Personnel Management's Human Resources Lines of Business initiative.

Previous legislative restrictions halted competitions at the Veterans Affairs Department and for specific programs at the Agriculture and Homeland Security departments.

Meanwhile, an amendment in the pending fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill would suspend all Defense Department competitions for the next three years.

The legislative backlash is nothing new for the competitive sourcing program, which has faced an uphill battle from the very beginning.

Expectations for the program were extraordinarily high at first, as Bush mandated that agencies compete 425,000 positions -- half of all federal jobs deemed suitable for competition. That figure was later reduced to 127,000 positions, but federal agencies still had difficulty meeting those goals as they faced fierce resistance from labor unions and Congress -- both Democrats and Republicans.

In fiscal 2007, agencies competed a modest 4,000 jobs. OMB officials, however, expect those competitions to yield $400 million in savings during the next five years.

Since 2003, federal agencies have held 1,375 competitions for just under 51,000 positions, according to OMB data.

The appropriations bill applies only to new competitive sourcing studies and would not affect any ongoing competitions. Agencies have indicated they would compete nearly 18,000 positions in fiscal 2008, although those projections are often overly optimistic.

"There are plenty of studies already in the pipeline that will take months, if not years, to complete," Erwin said. "Even with this one-year suspension, the competitive sourcing program will continue to be alive and well."

The appropriations bill also would end an Internal Revenue Service program that uses private contractors to chase down delinquent taxpayers.

"Under this very misguided and wasteful program, the IRS allows private contractors to collect unpaid taxes and to keep up to 24 percent of the tax revenue they bring in," Serrano said. "This program should be terminated."

Independent watchdogs have criticized the financial viability of the private debt collection program. A handful of bills to end the program have passed the House in recent years but have failed to gain traction in the Senate.

COMMENTS

• The federal government is the largest employeer of americans in the nation, it provides all of those employees with health insurance, life insurance, a retirement, and a upper lower class to middle class income (except for our soldiers who barely make it). The American government is the largest provider of middle income families in the nation and college educated dependants. The contractors that I hire/ outsource to do not cover their employees with these. The American government is a non-profit organization that should operate within the tax system for its operating funds, there is no company or organization that can do a better job for the American public than that. As long as there is a bottom line they can't compete. How can laying off American who have benefits and hiring americans and aliens who do not have benefits or receive middle income wages be better for the nation. That is a bottom line, throw away attitude. Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand economics. TW Posted June 28, 2008 12:44 PM
• Folks, the issue isn't more or less (or no competitive sourcing)--the issue is the government's overreliance on contractors (many of who are illegally performing inherently governmental work). So long as Executive and Legislative branch "leadership" continues to want to reduce FTE ceilings and federal budgets, yet allow agencies to allocate funds toward contracts, the outsourcing of commercial and inherelty governmental work will continue unabated. Veteran Posted June 25, 2008 9:12 PM
• Dan: You're correct that Halliburton was not given the job via A-76. Rather, the duties were arbitrarily outsourced to Halliburton - with disastrous results. The Bush administration is to blame for the Forest Service shortcomings and wasting money on A-76, not the green dems in congress. As for A-76 saving money, it is all via fudged numbers. A reduced head-count makes it look like the govt is saving $$. Then, after the the fact, it's concluded that the organization can't fulfill the contract because the staff has been gutted. This causes far more wasted resources in trying to right the problem. Or, a contractor underbids the government MEO, then pulls a bait & switch tactic by re-doing the contract after-the-fact as they know the government's hands are tied. It appears that you are the one who needs to get his facts straight instead of believing the A-76 propoganda offered by the Bush administration. You probably still believe Iraq has WMDs too, eh? David Posted June 25, 2008 12:08 PM