Lawmakers reject amendment to ban outsourcing targets

The Senate rejected an attempt to put the brakes on the Bush administration's competitive sourcing initiative Thursday.

By a 50 to 47 vote, the Senate scrapped an amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill that would have prevented the Office of Management and Budget from setting numerical targets for competitive sourcing. The amendment was introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. OMB has told agencies to compete or directly outsource 15 percent of their commercial jobs-127,500 jobs in all-by October, although it has said that some agencies may fall short of this target.

Mikulski's amendment was part of the original Treasury-Postal appropriations bill, but Senate Republicans removed it from the omnibus spending bill earlier this month.

The Senate passed a related amendment from Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., banning numerical targets that are not based on "considered research and past analysis." Additionally, targets must be "consistent with the stated mission" of agencies under the provision. The Thomas amendment was supported by OMB and is not a threat to the competitive sourcing initiative.

Mikulski's amendment was strongly opposed by OMB. Budget Director Mitch Daniels had said 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.

Defeat of Mikulski's amendment is a setback for opponents of competitive sourcing, including federal employee unions. "The quotas apply only to work performed by federal employees-not new work or work performed by contractors, who keep and retain almost all of their work without ever experiencing public-private competition," said American Federation of Government Employees President Bobby Harnage in a statement. "They explicitly encourage agencies to contract out the jobs of federal employees, particularly those from historically oppressed groups, without any competition."

Sens. Thomas, Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., George Allen, R-Va. and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., led opposition to the Mikulski amendment.