Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 25, 2007)

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike section 213 of this legislation which, as drafted, would have the same anticompetitive effect as language already included in a number of the Democrat majority's other appropriations bills by preventing funds from being spent to conduct public-private competitions.

In this case, it would prevent funds from being used to allow the private sector to compete against the government for jobs at the Bureau of Prisons or Federal Prison Industries, Incorporated.

While this policy may be good for increasing dues payments to the public-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 take 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 the next 10 years by closing performance gaps and improving efficiencies.

Competitions completed 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 dollar spent on competition, with annualized expected savings of more than $1 billion.

This provision, included by the Democrat Appropriations Committee, directly contradicts a number of legislative provisions recently passed on this issue by the House, including: The conference report for the 1997 omnibus appropriations bill, which specifically directed the Bureau of Prisons to undertake a prison privatization demonstration project; also, the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, which directed the Bureau of Prisons to rehabilitate D.C. inmates in private prisons; and since 2001, every Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill has directed the Bureau of Prisons to contract for prison services.

I think the answer is clear, Mr. Chairman, that when the Democrats claim that these services are ``inherently governmental,'' despite numerous citations in the A-76 circular that these activities are exempt from this definition, and prevent competitive sourcing from taking place, that the Democrat leadership is clearly hearing from labor bosses that this bill represents another good opportunity to increase their power at the expense of taxpayers and good government.

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

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

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

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