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June 25, 2003
Federal privatization suffering death of a thousand cuts
Bush's administration has a goal to use competition to improve the performance and cut the cost of the work done by about have about half of the federal bureaucracy (~850,000 workers). The plan has long been in place in his President's Management Agenda, but it became much more complete recently with the finalization of regulations for the competition by OMB.
Naturally, federal workers have fought this plan all along. Now they are concentrating on Congress-holding protests , filing lawsuits, and pushing their friends in Congress to introduce small measures in appropriations bills that will exempt batches of them from competition. Such language is already in legislation for the FAA and Forest Service, and is expected to be put in the Agriculture appropriations bill soon.
It looks like the Administration will step up to the fight. Congress needs to see that while competition is not without errors, the benefits of the overall competition program are huge.
Posted by adrianm at June 25, 2003 02:12 PM
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