Barbara Mikulski: “I want to make a few quick points. First, my amendment, word for word, was voted for in the House of Representatives. I…”

“I want to make a few quick points. First, my amendment, word for word, was voted for in the House of Representatives. I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle and to my very good friend, the Senator from Virginia, that this amendment was offered by two Congressmen from Virginia, Moran and Wolf. This amendment passed the House 261 to 166. Tom Davis, Jo Ann Davis, and Frank Wolf voted for this. I might also note that the Presiding Officer voted for it when he was in the House. So it had bipartisan support. I wish we had that bipartisan support. I wish the people who voted for it in the House would vote for it now that they are in the Senate. That is No. 1. No. 2, who would be contracted out? OMB has told the agencies, 127,500 people by the end of 2003. They are going to go for the largest numbers in the quickest way. It is going to be clerical. It is going to be support. It is going to be the mail. It is going to have a tremendous impact on people of color who have worked their way into Federal civil service. If one reads the Federal Managers Magazine, they have said the VA has said it is going to have a tremendous impact, they fear, on their diversity. The same has also been said by other agencies. Again, I am not looking for quotas in diversity anymore than I am looking for quotas in contracting out, but I want us to know who is going to be affected. It is not going to be that high-tech software engineer.…”