Issue Position: Eisenhower Policy and the Fair Act

Issue Position

In 1955, Federal Policy, established by President Eisenhower, stated "in the process of governing, the Government should not compete with its citizens. The competitive enterprise system, characterized by individual freedom and initiative, is the primary source of national economic strength. In recognition of this principle, it has been and will continue to be the general policy of the Government to rely on commercial sources to supply the products and services the Government needs... the Federal Government shall rely on commercially available sources to provide commercial products and services.... the Government shall not start or carry on any activity to provide a commercial product or service if the product or service can be procured more economically from a commercial source."

Fast forward to 1998 and the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR) Public Law 105-270. Then President Clinton signed this bipartisan bill. This bill authorized all Federal Agencies to conduct an inventory of all the government activities it performs that were commercial in nature. This inventory, conducted under the FAIR ACT, found more than 850,000 Federal positions that were duplicating and outright competing with private sector business.

President Bush and his administration proposed "Competitive Sourcing". This was to be a reasonable, incremental process for reviewing these Federal positions. Many amendments intended to derail Competitive Sourcing have been added to Bills in Congress since this has been proposed. To date, we have not seen, nor will we see, any improvement to the private sector commercial business, through Competitive Sourcing, or a decrease in Federal employees.

These facts hit hard. Imagine if Eisenhower were our President today. When elected, I am committed to supporting private sector business in every way possible and doing everything I can to get and keep governement out of the way of those business owners who are the backbone of our great state and country.

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