SCIENCE, STATE, JUSTICE, COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 16, 2005)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
AMENDMENT NO. 2 OFFERED BY MR. CLEAVER
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Mr. CLEAVER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Chairman, let me begin by thanking the gentlemen from Virginia and West Virginia. They have both been very easy to work with.
Mr. Chairman, the amendment I am offering with my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), is a very simple amendment. It would simply prohibit any funds appropriated under the bill from being used to carry out an A-76 privatization review of 25 employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Logistics Supply Center, known as the NLSC, in Kansas City, Missouri.
Our amendment does not require Members to vote on the A-76 issue overall; rather, it simply asks that our colleagues take a stand against this particular A-76 review. The NLSC's A-76 was begun in order to achieve a quota established by OMB that Congress subsequently prohibited. That fact was outlined in a June 2002 NOAA memorandum. No other rationale other than this quota was given to justify targeting the NLSC for an A-76 review. Even after OMB repudiated privatization quotas, the NLSC A-76 went forward.
Additionally, the review seemingly ignores the inherently competitive nature of the NLSC. There is no requirement that any agency use this service; rather, agencies decide on their own whether or not to use the NLSC. The NLSC competes every day to sell its services to agencies. It has been the recipient of multiple service awards, and it has reduced its response time to 2 days and raised its accuracy rates to 99 percent.
Finally, let me just say that the trouble that I have with this, that I hope every Member of Congress will have, is that we have spent over $1 million hiring consultants to study 25 employees. That turns out to be $41,000 per employee, more than many of them earn.
In April of this year, I, along with the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), Senators BOND and TALENT, wrote the Department of Commerce urging Secretary Gutierrez to bring this privatization review to an end. However, despite this bipartisan support and the clear reasons for stopping this review, the Department of Commerce moved ahead.
Let me be clear, Mr. Chairman. This amendment does not address even slightly the overall issue of contracting out Federal jobs.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment, and express appreciation to both gentlemen from Virginia, and look forward to working with them.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov