Ban on job competition targets stripped from Senate bill

The Senate has removed language from an omnibus fiscal 2003 appropriations bill that would have blocked the White House from putting thousands of federal jobs up for competition with private firms. But Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., an opponent of the administration's initiative, plans to reintroduce the language as an amendment to the bill, according to spokeswoman Amy Hagovsky. The provision, which was part of the Treasury-Postal bill, would prevent the Office of Management and Budget from setting numerical targets for competitive sourcing. OMB has told agencies to compete or directly outsource 15 percent of their commercial jobs by October 2003, although it has said that some agencies may fall short of this target. The full House approved the provision in July as part of the Treasury-Postal bill. OMB has strongly condemned the contracting provision. OMB Director Mitch Daniels said last year that advisers to President Bush would recommend that he veto the Treasury-Postal bill if it contained the ban on targets. In September, OMB officials said the administration might order agencies to compete all commercial work in government-850,000 federal jobs-if the measure became law. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., led Senate efforts to remove the provision from the appopriation bill. "Sen. Thomas is very pleased that the appropriators have stripped this provision," said Chris Jahn, Thomas' chief of staff. "It would have prevented the President from establishing targets for increasing government efficiency." Federal employee unions favor the provision and are backing Mikulski's efforts to reintroduce it as an amendment. "The House repudiated the OMB privatization quotas on a bipartisan basis," said John Threlkeld, a legislative analyst for the American Federation of Government Employees. "The Senate should follow that example."