Daniel Akaka: “I rise today to support and cosponsor Senator Mikulski's amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill. Our amendment…”

“I rise today to support and cosponsor Senator Mikulski's amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill. Our amendment would prevent funds appropriated by this bill from being used to impose privatization quotas on Federal agencies. This amendment would promote sensible procurement policies by eliminating the need to contract out Federal work just to meet subjective targets. Decisions to contract out Federal work, which would reduce the Federal workforce, should never be based on political objectives. This amendment is an important step towards preventing contracting decisions based on arbitrary quotas. Under proposed regulations governing privatization, up to 850,000 Federal employee jobs will be reviewed for privatization. At minimum, the administration intends to open up at least 425,000 Federal jobs to competition by the end of 2004. The decision to do so is not based on data or hard science. How did the administration choose that number? I want my colleagues to know that there is no evidence that outsourcing such a sizeable number of Federal jobs so quickly will achieve any cost savings at all. The proposed revisions to A-76, the regulations governing the contracting of Federal work, support outsourcing quotas by forcing agencies to outsource jobs without first holding public-private competitions, regardless of whether the move to privatization saves the Government any money.”