Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to strike section 212 of this bill, H.R. 5326.

Madam Chair, Congress should be taking steps to encourage the creation of more private sector jobs, not growing government. Legislative provisions that prohibit, impede, interfere, obstruct, encumber, or delay contracting out opportunities, or even require in-sourcing, require these things to be done, are counterproductive to reducing the deficit, limiting the size of government, and creating private sector jobs.

Madam Chair, I was one of the founding members of what has been dubbed the Yellow Pages Caucus, a group of people who came to Washington and said, hey, if the private sector can go out and do this, maybe we need to think about whether the government should be doing it and taking those opportunities away from those people who are advertising in the Yellow Pages or in the modern equivalent, on those Google searches that might be on people's iPads.

Well, not only do Federal Agencies duplicate oftentimes private business, but many engage in unfair government competition with the private sector. This amendment would allow A 76 competition within the Bureau of Prisons for the performance of commercial activities within the organization. By allowing the private sector to compete for these services, it forces the Bureau of Prisons to take a hard look at the things that it is currently doing and find savings for us hardworking taxpayers. It is only common sense that these A 76 provisions force government to be more efficient.

Now, what is an A 76? An A 76 is a circular or a letter that is produced by the Office of Management and Budget. And in this it says that whenever possible, and to achieve greater efficiency and productivity, the Federal Government should conduct competition between public Agencies and the private sector to determine who should perform the work.

We are going out and saying, hey, where does it make sense to go do this? Who can go and do this cheaper and deliver a better product?

It requires these executive Agencies to annually prepare lists of activities considered both commercial and inherently governmental. All we're doing with this amendment is to say that the Bureau of Prisons ought to be holding to the exact same requirements that all of the other Departments and all of the other Bureaus must do in the Federal Government. A 76 forces government Agencies to keep up with the lowest bid the private sector can offer, and it forces government to cut costs and increase efficiencies.

Now the other interesting thing is that with this section 212, we wonder oftentimes what does section 212 do. Section 212 exempts the Bureau of Prisons from doing this activity. This makes no sense to me, Madam Chair. This makes no sense to me that we would take an organization like the Bureau of Prisons and say don't worry about it folks, we trust you. We think you're doing this as efficiently as possible.

Well, Madam Chair, I believe in that old idiom that Ronald Reagan came up with: trust, but verify. I would like to see the Bureau of Prisons do that exact thing. I think they ought to go out and demonstrate that they can in fact and should in fact be doing these activities that they are.

It's estimated, and this is from the Office of Management and Budget from July 2003, page 2 of a report that they have, ``Competitive Sourcing Conducting Public-Private Competition in a Reasonable and Responsible Manner,'' is the title of that, they estimate that this act of competition alone generates cost savings from 10 40 percent on average. So what we are really talking about is we cannot even ask about or study how we can save the hardworking taxpayers of America these moneys in the Bureau of Prisons. If it is good enough for the Department of Defense, if it's good enough for Treasury, if it's good enough for all of these other Departments and all these other areas, why can't it be an option to save those same dollars in the Bureau of Prisons.

I ask you, Madam Chair, does this make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me.

Well, during this continued period of economic uncertainty and unsustainable Federal spending, Americans are looking to Congress for commonsense, taxpayer-first solutions to reduce the cost of services provided by their Federal Government. This amendment allows our Nation's free market system to fairly compete. The role of government should be to govern, not to operate businesses inside of the government.

And with that, Madam Chair, I ask for my colleagues to support my amendment to section 212.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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