Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the point I want to make is that we are not opposing privatization, we are not opposing outsourcing, and the point that the gentleman from Oklahoma was trying to make simply is not consistent at all with this amendment. We are opposed to arbitrary quotas. They are arbitrary because they apply to every single Federal agency. The Department of Defense is different from the IRS. More than 225,000 jobs in the Department of Defense are supposed to be privatized by the end of 2004. The managers at DOD said that is not going to work. But at the IRS, do we really want to apply the same arbitrary quotas? Do we really want private accounting firms reviewing income tax returns, private collection agencies enforcing income tax receipts? I do not think so. Every agency is different, and every Federal manager understands their agency. We do not want arbitrary quotas, but we certainly want the best use of the Federal taxpayers' money. It is only managers that can identify what jobs should be privatized by function. Mr. Chairman, OMB's directive is so burdensome that the result is direct conversion of jobs to the private sector against the wishes of the managers, because the managers know that the only way they are going to get a green light, which is the system that OMB is imposing, is to meet these targets. But they also know they are arbitrary. They know they are not in the best interests of the taxpayer.”