Date: 2004-09-21
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman. this amendment deals with the process that we now have in place for contracting out work that is being performed by Federal employees. in other words. the rules that govern the privatizatlon of Federal Government jobs. That process. which is known as the A76 process. named after the OMB circular. is now a broken process. In fact. both Federal Government employees and private contractors have serious. legitimate complaints about the existing competitive sourcing process. This amendment would. in effect. encourage OMB to go back to the drawing board and develop a competitive sourcing process that makes sense and is fair to all parties. It is an amendment that is identical word for word to the amendment that the House passed on a bipartisan basis last year as part of the TransportationTreasury appropriations bill. We passed this amendment last year for a very simple reason. We recognized that the existing contractingout process is unfair and that it needs to be fixed. and that has not changed from last year to this. Indeed. already this year. the Committee on Appropriations and this House have acknowledged that the process is inadequate because we have passed both appropriations and authorization bills that change the competitive sourcing process as it applies to specific government agencies. For example. the Defense appropriations bill that we passed. and which the President has already signed. changes the existing rules for Department of Defense Federal employees in a number of ways. That bill ensures that Federal employees of the Defense Department are always given an opportunity to compete to keep their jobs by forming what is known as The Most Efficient Organization. The Defense appropriations bill. again signed by the President already this year. requires that whatever entity is seeking to take over the work. to bid on the work. whether it be a private contractor or a group of Federal employees. must demonstrate that they will save the taxpayer dollars through a procedure known as "minimal cost differential." or the "10 percent savings rule." It makes sense that we would ask as part of the competitive process that we save the taxpayers money. The Defense appropriations bill also prevents private contractors from gaining an advantage by contributing less to health insurance for their employees or by stripping people of their health benefits. Those are provisions that have already passed the House. the Senate. and signed by the President as part of the Defense appropriations bill. They make sense and they are fair. If the Current process is working. why did we change them as part of this yeats Defense appropriations bill? Why should those rules which we now have applied to DOD employees regarding contracting out not also apply to Federal employees at the Department of Transportation. Treasury Department. and other Government agencies? Why should those other Federal employees be treated as secondclass citizens? We also passed the Defense authorization bill this year. That legislation contains changes to the contractingout process that requires that Federal employees and private contractors have the same rights to appeal an adverse decision. If they get a bad decision. they appeal. We should make sure that right applies equally to both parties. That is simple fairness. Then there are the Homeland Security appropriation bills and the Interior appropriation bills that have already passed this House. Those bills also have specific little changes to the contractingout process. If it is so fair as it is. why did we as a body already change it this year with respect to those agencies? And. indeed. the bill we are on today. the TransportationTreasury appropriation bill. as it came out of committee. contained the HoyerWolf language that also would have made the process more fair. that was taken out on a procedural motion earlier. But the pattern is clear: The Committee on Appropriations and this House. through the actions we have already taken this year on numerous appropriations and authorization bills. have recognized serious problems in the contractingout process. The only problem is we have responded on an ad hoc piecemeal fashion. We now have four different sets of rules in different appropriation bills. and we keep changing the rules year to year. The result is we have a patchwork of different rules that apply to different agencies. It is unfair to Federal employees. it is unfair to the private contractors. We should address this issue in a uniform comprehensive manner. That is what this amendment is all about. It does not get rid of the competitive sourcing rules. The rules in effect before May 2003 will apply until OMB gets its act together and addresses the inadequacies in the process and addresses the kind of issue that this House has addressed this year in its appropriation bill. That is what this is about. sending it back to OMB and telling them to start from scratch and get a fair process in place. Then we will not have to deal with this issue year after year -on this appropriation bill. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.