July 2, 2003
The Honorable Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
H-107 Capitol Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Majority Leader DeLay:
In his two years in office, President Bush has constructed a strong Management Agenda that focuses on public-private competition to create a performance-based management initiative designed to improve performance and efficiency. However, I am writing to inform you that the President's plan to subject federal workers to competition has come under attack from liberal lawmakers on Capital Hill. Ensuring competition between the private sector and the federal government is as important as passing needed tax relief for the American people.
President Bush has introduced and supported a plan to require federal agencies to allow private companies to compete for the work done by all 850,000 federal workers who perform commercial activities. Nevertheless, federal employee unions are currently spearheading an effort in Congress to ban these needed competitions. In fact, appropriations bills are being used to add legislative language that either bans out right or exempts many federal commercial functions from competition, and they have already succeeded in adding this language to the FAA Reauthorization Act and Interior and Agriculture Appropriations bills.
Competition among public and private entities drives down costs and ratchets up performance. According to the General Accounting Office and the Center for Naval Analysis, two independent and objective groups that have conducted the most thorough research on competitive sourcing, the cost of a function goes down 30 percent regardless of whether the in-house government employees or a private contractor win the competition. These efficiencies translate into savings of billions of dollars that can be used for much needed tax relief for all Americans.
If this attempt to short-circuit the President's efforts to bring competition and reform to the federal government is successful, public employee unions and their political allies in Congress will relegate expensive service and higher taxes for years to come. In effect, they will kill the competitive sourcing initiative and roll back the opportunities presented for real fundamental reform of the federal government that can be achieved through competition.
Instead of promoting government bureaucracies and monopolies, Congress should strip the anti-competitive sourcing provisions from the Interior and Agriculture Appropriations and FAA bills.
I appreciate your efforts to stop members of Congress from protecting inefficient government monopolies that continue to waste tax dollars while failing to provide even a reasonable level of service. Thank you for your continued support of the American taxpayer.
Sincerely,
Grover G. Norquist
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