White House steps up effort to block job competition changes

After a day of negotiations, lawmakers are still at a loss on how to address White House concerns over budget bill provisions curbing efforts to put federal jobs up for competition with private firms.

Last week, House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on the fiscal 2004 Transportation-Treasury appropriations measure, which contained language allowing federal employees to appeal decisions in job competitions conducted under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 to the General Accounting Office.

Contractors' organizations immediately protested that part of the bill, along with provisions that would make it easier for federal employees to prevail over private firms in job competitions. Those provisions would allow in-house teams to submit bids in all A-76 studies where more than 10 jobs are at stake, and would give the agency team a cost advantage.

The White House raised last minute objections to the Transportation-Treasury conference report, which is not yet formally filed.

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal employee union, said the Transportation-Treasury measure deserves backing from OMB. "That bipartisan agreement should have earned OMB's strong support, instead of last-minute complaints in response to carping, competition-averse contractors, especially given that most of this is already law for the Defense Department, the agency that does the most contracting of all," he said.

Appropriators are loathe to reopen the measure to amendment, for fear of causing another showdown over the touchy issue of the current ban on travel to Cuba. GOP leaders were able to preserve the ban in conference after both chambers had voted to remove it.

Now OMB is questioning not only the Transportation-Treasury provision, but similar competitive sourcing language in other spending bills, including the already-enacted Defense and Interior spending bills.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said appropriators would seek to address the administration's concerns in the omnibus spending measure currently in the works on Capitol Hill. The omnibus will be carried as part of the Agriculture measure, and will not include the Transportation-Treasury bill.

Lawmakers would like to finish up the all of the spending measures by Thanksgiving, and are pushing to complete the Transportation-Treasury bill by the end of this week.

But so far, they have not been able to get past the White House's concerns over competitive sourcing, partly because they cannot put a finger on exactly what those concerns are.

When asked about the specific hang-ups, appropriations committee spokesman John Scofield said "the administration is upset with something in the Defense and Interior bills." Scofield said he had no further details. "That's part of the problem," he added.

OMB spokesman J.T. Young said the White House is engaged in talks with congressional appropriators, but he would not provide details on problematic provisions. "We're continuing to work on this important presidential priority that is beneficial to the taxpayer, the service recipient, and is fair to the federal employee," he said.

Young expressed frustration at the White House move. "We can't get it clear exactly what they want," he said.

Jason Peckenpaugh contributed to this report.