David Thomas: “I bring to the floor and to this bill an amendment which was offered last year and adopted by a bipartisan vote of 59 to…”

“I bring to the floor and to this bill an amendment which was offered last year and adopted by a bipartisan vote of 59 to 39 but was trimmed out of the omnibus appropriations bill. It has to do with the question of the Federal Government competing unfairly with private firms; agencies performing commercial, rather than inherently governmental, activities for other agencies. My amendment requires Federal agencies to demonstrate that they can perform more efficiently and effectively than the private sector before providing commercially available goods and services to other agencies. It has been the Federal Government's policy for over 40 years that it should not compete with the private sector. In fact, the Government should rely on the private sector to supply commercially available goods and services. However, this policy is too often ignored. For example, the Defense Science Board calculates that out of 850,000 full-time positions needed to provide commercial services for the military, 640,000 are held by Federal employees instead of private sector contractors.”