Announcement by the Chairman

Floor Speech

Announcement by the Chairman -- (House of Representatives - July 17, 2007)

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Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Chairman, my amendment would strike section 111 of this legislation, which, as drafted, would have the same effect as language already included in a number of the Democrat majority's other appropriations bills which prevents funds from being spent to conduct public-private competitions.

While this policy may be good for increasing dues payments to private sector union bosses, it is unquestionably bad for taxpayers and for Federal agencies because agencies are left with less money to spend on their core missions when Congress takes the opportunity to use competition away from them.

In 2006, Federal agencies ``competed'' only 1.7 percent of their commercial workforce, which makes up less than one-half of 1 percent of the entire civilian workforce. This very small use of competition for services is expected to generate savings of $1.3 billion over 10 years by closing performance gaps and improving efficiencies.

Competitions competed since 2003 are expected to produce almost $7 billion in savings for taxpayers over the next 10 years. This means that taxpayers will receive a return of about $31 for every $1 spent on competition, with annualized expected savings of more than $1 billion.

Specifically at the Department of Labor, since May 2004, 27 public-private partnerships have competed, involving over 1,000 positions. And thanks to a 10 percent protection clause, 24 of these competitions have been won by the government. This overwhelming track record of government success in competing with private sector begs the question, why would the Democrat leadership insist upon preventing Federal agencies from running their operations in the most efficient manner when they have been successful in the past?

I think the answer is clear, Madam Chairman, that when this appropriations bill cuts the budget for the Office of Labor Management Standards, which monitors union compliance with Federal law, and prevents competitive sourcing from taking place, that the Democrat leadership is clearly hearing from labor bosses that this bill represents a good opportunity to increase the power of labor bosses at the expense of taxpayers and good government.

In this time of stretched budgets and bloated spending, Congress should be looking to use all of the tools it can to find taxpayer savings and reduce the cost of services that are already being provided by thousands of hardworking companies nationwide.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense taxpayer-first amendment to oppose the underlying provision to benefit private sector union bosses by keeping cost-saving competition available to the government.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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