Date: 2003-09-09
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Reclaiming my time. I understand the gentlemans position. To be sure. all of us who have dealt with these issues. and I have. for a number of years. there are concerns about the way the administration has gone about competitive sourcing. Two major problems that come in: One we have fixed with this bill. and that is when the administration goes to competitive sourcing. there is a co�t to that because you have to hire people to evaluate it. There are costs of the government looking and revamping how they would produce a service. You are evaluating the private sector to see how they would provide the service. There are costs to.that. and right now those costs are not currently recaptured. We have put language into the underlying legislation here through our committee that will. for the first time. have the Federal Government report on those costs so that they can be adequately waived. The second is issue Is. I think in some cases the administration Is moving too fast. doing too much competitive sourcing. more than they can adequately handle and evaluate. We have heard there have been a couple highprofile instances where the administration has come forward and the evaluations have probably not been appropriate. and I think they are biting off nmre than they can chew. But I do not think that goes to the base of the A76 reasonable or reasonable. I like the neW procedure. or if there are revamps. I would prefer not to do it through this process. I would rather go back and evaluate it in committees. We have held hearings and are continuing to look at this. Remember. competitive sourcing is not the same as outsourcing or privatization. Its purpose is neither to downsize the workforce or to contract jobs out. It Is about harnessing the benefits of competition to produce superior performance for the taxpayer. regardless of who performs a service. And in almost every instance where competitive sourcing Is applied. the government ends up with a savings. Sometimes this is done by the government employees and the government groups who have gotten together and have retooled the way they provide the service and do it more efficiently. Sometimes it is done by an outside party coming in and showing that they can do it better. There is no way to measure efficiency in government when you are a monopoly. But if you can go out. occasionally. to the private sector and say. what can you perform. it gives us a standard of performance. a measurement of efficiency that we would not have otherwise. Now. there is a problem -with this that I readily concede. and it troubles me. and it is one that thle gentleman from Maryland and I have wrestled with. And that is. who wants to come work for the Federal government and dedicate a career to civil service if your job is going to be up for evaluation every 5 years. which is what the guidelines in last years bill called for. Twenty percent every year was going to be looked at. of inherently nongovernmental services that the government is providing. and we would see if it could be competitively sourced. And. basically. that meant on average every 5 years a persons job would be evaluated. and that hurts our recruitment. It hurts our retention. Now. the fact of the matter is. in most cases where the outside parties win. Federal employees are offered rights of first refusal. In fact. that Is spelled out better in the new A76 circular. That if. in fact. the government is displaced by an outside firm. jobs are offered to the Federal employee government to provide that service so they are not out of work. They are no longer Federal employees. They lose some benefits. they pick up some benefits in some particular cases. But to be sure. there are instances that we wrestle with. Now on May 29. the OMB published its final revisions of the A76 process. These revisions were the first major overhaul to the competitive sourcing process in 20 years. And this came after all parties. but particularly Federal employees. were complaining about the old system. a system that we return to if this amendment passes. What we have now is a product of a 2year effort that includes discussions and negotiations with all stakeholders including Federal employee groups. private sector companies. As I stated before. more than 700 comments were taken Into account in developing these new guidelines. They also incorporated the core recommendations of the Commercial Activities Panel. This panel. headed by the Comptroller General. conducted a yearlong review of the competitive sourcing process and issued recommendations. most of them unanimous. for comprehensive changes to process. And.I think we have to give that revamped process a chance to work before we willynilly throw it out and go back to the old process. which everyone was complaining about. I think the new process is. in many ways. fair. The gentleman from Maryland and I disagree. I will address more of this later. I urge that we oppose the Van Hollen amendment which would take us back to the days that everyone was complaining about and just were not working efficiently.