Chris Van Hollen: “for the first time in 4 years, I will not offer an amendment to this bill to block the implementation of the May 2003…”

“for the first time in 4 years, I will not offer an amendment to this bill to block the implementation of the May 2003 Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 regulations for contracting out work that is performed by Federal employees around the country. The difference this year, Mr. Chairman, is that Chairman Knollenberg and Ranking Member Olver agreed to my request to include satisfactory language in the bill that is before us. I want to thank them for addressing this issue this year. Both Federal Government employees and private contractors had serious legitimate concerns and complaints about the A-76 competitive sourcing process. The amendment I offered in past years essentially required OMB to go back to the drawing board and develop a uniform competitive sourcing process that addresses everybody's concerns. Despite strong objections and veto threats from the White House, we had spirited debates in the three previous appropriations cycles on the Van Hollen amendment, and each year the House approved the amendment with bipartisan majorities. We passed the Van Hollen amendment for the last 3 years because we recognized that the contracting out process was unfair. That was evidenced by the fact that we passed a number of bills to change the contracting out process on an ad hoc basis in numerous Federal agencies, including Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Agriculture. But the result was a patchwork of inconsistent regulations.…”