[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 34 (Monday, March 17, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2337-S2339]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FREEDOM FROM GOVERNMENT COMPETITION ACT
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I have a couple of things I wanted to
visit about this morning. The first one of the priorities that I and a
number of people have for the 105th Congress is S. 314, the Freedom
From Government Competition Act.
This is an effort, along with many other things, to seek to reduce
the size of the central Government, which most people agree we should
do. It is one of the reasons we try to have a balanced budget
amendment, so that we can control the size of the growth of the Federal
Government by our willingness to pay for it.
One of the other areas, of course, that we have been very interested
in, and continue to be, is the idea of ``devolution''--kind of a new
word. It means move some of the functions down to State and local
governments so that we do, in keeping with the Founding Fathers, keep
the size of central Government relatively limited and do those things
that are essential to be done on the national level, and there are
many, and yet not do the things that could better be done either at the
local level in government or, indeed, in the private sector. The
private sector is what I want to talk about a little today.
In general, from the title, we are simply saying that we want to
remove the
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competition of the Federal Government in those things that could as
well or, indeed, better be done in the private sector. So S. 314 is
called the Freedom From Government Competition Act. This bill is
supported by a broad cross-section of business groups, and I have a
list of those.
I ask unanimous consent to have the list printed in the Record, along
with several letters of endorsement.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Groups Supporting the Freedom From Government Competition Act
National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).
U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).
National Association of Women Business Owners.
American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC).
ACIL (Formerly the American Council of Independent
Laboratories).
Business Coalition for Fair Competition (BCFC).
Business Executives for National Security (BENS).
Contract Services Association.
Design Professionals Coalition.
Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors
(MAPPS).
Procurement Roundtable.
Professional Services Council (PSC).
Small Business Legislative Council.
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National Federation of
Independent Business,
Washington, DC, February 11, 1997.
Hon. Craig Thomas,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Thomas: On behalf of the 600,000 members of
the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), I
commend you for introducing the Freedom From Government
Competition Act of 1997.
Today government agencies are competing against small
businesses in an increasing number of areas. Virtually all
goods and services offered by government agencies are
available from the private sector, which provides them more
efficiently. Small business owners who face government
competition spend thousands of dollars to develop their
businesses, while their federally funded competitors are tax
exempt.
NFIB opposes the government's commercial activities that
compete directly with small firms in the private sector. In
fact, in a recent survey, 70 percent of small business owners
expressed their opposition to government agencies being
allowed to compete against private businesses. Additionally,
unfair government competition was one of the top
recommendations of the 1995 White House Conference on Small
Business.
Your legislation would allow small businesses to compete
fairly, and allow small business to do what they do best,
create new jobs and grow the economy, while still providing a
quality product in an efficient manner.
NFIB strongly supports your legislation and stands ready to
assist you to stop the practice of unfair government
competition against our nation's small businesses.
Sincerely,
Dan Danner,
Vice President,
Federal Governmental Relations.
____
The Associated General
Contractors of America,
Washington, DC, March 7, 1997.
Hon. Craig Thomas,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Thomas: The Associated General Contractors of
America (AGC) thanks you for your leadership on the Freedom
from Government Competition Act of 1997, S. 314. AGC strongly
supports the concept that the government should not compete
with its citizenry. Full and open, fair competition provides
low cost, highly qualified contractors for government work.
Contracting out government procurement more effectively and
efficiently utilizes taxpayer dollars. This bill will
encourage the growth of small business and further the
competitiveness of large business. In determining commercial
areas in which the government unfairly competes with the
private sector, common sense outsourcing decisions will be
made using the process outlined in the bill.
Sound public policy, however, dictates that the government
must maintain its stewardship role to safeguard fairness of
competition. Oversight of the outsourcing program, ensures
that the end result is fair competition. Successful examples
of this type of oversight can be seen in the contracting
actions of the General Services Administration's Federal
Building Fund, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Naval
Engineering Facilities Command.
AGC stands ready to assist as you to continue your efforts
to establish free market competition. Your invaluable
leadership on this issue will be needed as Federal Government
allows the entrepreneurial spirit to flourish.
Sincerely,
Stephen E. Sandherr,
Executive Vice President.
____
National Association of
Women Business Owners,
Washington, DC, February 27, 1997.
Hon. Craig Thomas,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Thomas: Today government agencies are
competing against small businesses in an increasing number of
areas. Virtually all goods and services offered by government
agencies are available from the private sector, which
provides them more efficiently. Small business owners who
face government competition spend thousands of dollars to
develop their businesses, while their federally funded
competitors are tax exempt.
Your legislation would allow small businesses to compete
fairly, and allow small business to do what they do best,
create new jobs and grow the economy, while still providing a
quality product in an efficient manner.
On behalf of the members of the National Association of
Women Business Owners (NAWBO), I commend you for introducing
the Freedom From Government Competition Act of 1997.
NAWBO opposes the government's commercial activities that
compete directly with small firms in the private sector. In
fact, in a recent survey, 70 percent of small business owners
expressed their opposition to government agencies being
allowed to compete against private businesses. Additionally,
unfair government competition was one of the top
recommendations of the 1995 White House Conference on Small
Business.
NAWBO strongly supports your legislation and stands ready
to assist you to stop the practice of unfair government
competition against our nation's small businesses.
Sincerely,
Terry Neese,
Corporate and Public Affairs Liaison.
Mr. THOMAS. Let me just go over some of these folks who do support
it: National Federation of Independent Businesses, U.S. Chamber,
Associated General Contractors of America, National Association of
Women Business Owners, Consulting Engineers Council, Business Coalition
for Fair Competition, Design Professionals Coalition, and many others.
So it is designed to say basically that in those areas of Government
activities and Government operations, for those things that are done
that are basically commercial, there ought to at least be an
opportunity for the private sector to compete. It is designed to open
the potential market of $30 billion nationally for businesses, for the
private sector, both large and small. And as a matter of fact, most of
the contracts would go to small business.
It is designed to level the playing field--those are words we use a
lot, but they have meaning--for thousands of businesses in the whole
economy of this country from the very ordinary kinds of things to high-
technology things--janitorial services, hospitality and recreation
service businesses, engineering services, laboratory and testing
services.
As a matter of fact, I really became involved in this in the
legislature in the State of Wyoming where we had government competing
for laboratory services, where the private sector was available there
to do that with the same kind of quality or even better and at less
cost. So that is what we decided to do.
It will provide for better value to taxpayers because it capitalizes
on talent and expertise available in the competitive private sector. It
has been Federal policy for a very long time--as a matter of fact, some
40 years--that contracting out to the private sector would be, indeed,
a function of the Federal Government, but the fact is that it has not
really worked out that way. So we need a legislative solution. We say
we are going to do it, but we do not do it. And I understand that. Part
of the reason, of course, is that in an agency you have your own
operation and your own staff and would prefer to do it.
The other is often when there has been some effort to try to
determine the efficiency of it, we find that testing is really not very
fair and so you end up saying, well, Government can do it cheaper, but
you have not really analyzed it in a very fair way.
We have a lot of things that the Federal Government should be doing,
and they take too much time and money on goods and services, in my
view, that could better be delivered by the private sector.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated in the past that 1.4
million Federal employees do work that is basically commercial in
nature. This competition, of course, is tougher on the private sector.
It kills small business, stifles economic growth, and lowers the tax
base, particularly in States such as mine where 50 percent of the
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State belongs to the Federal Government, and it is difficult to keep
the private sector and the tax base going. It hurts small business. So
it has been a concern of small business.
We have had White House small business conferences in 1980, 1986, and
1994, and in all three of these conferences this has been the major
concern.
Let me just briefly explain the bill. I indicated that for some
time--like 40 years--we have had a policy to do contracting, to bring
the private sector in to do things, but they really have not done that.
So we are now saying statutorily there is a system for giving small
business that opportunity. It does not say that it has to do that. It
says that when there is a commercial activity, the private sector
should be given an even chance to see if they can do it more
efficiently than the Government. And there are exceptions to that, of
course. There are legitimate, inherent activities of Government, and
those will be the exceptions--national security, where the Federal
Government can provide a better value, and we recognize that that can
be. We are not asking that it be given to the private sector if,
indeed, the Federal Government agency can do it more efficiently, or in
the case, of course, where the private sector cannot provide the goods
and services.
So this bill establishes a system and a process where the Office of
Management and Budget in the executive branch will identify those
Government functions that are ``inherently and basically commercial in
nature.''
It also establishes an Office of Commercial Activities within OMB to
implement the bill. So now you do not have the agency that is going to
do the contracting making the decision as to whether they do it or not.
There will be an outside effort made to identify the functions that
could best be done that way and to establish provisions for the
transition of Federal employees if there should be some reduction
there.
The climate, I think, is right for action of this kind. Almost
everybody agrees we ought to direct the money, if we can save money by
better Government--there are lots of underlying issues, whether it be
defense, whether it be health care, whether it be Medicare--to where we
can better use those dollars rather than doing the things that someone
else could do more efficiently.
The Senate was in support of the concept of this bill; last year, the
Senate voted 59 to 39 in favor of a Treasury-Postal appropriations
amendment that would have prevented unfair Government competition. It
was dropped, unfortunately, from the omnibus appropriations bill.
If we are going to balance the budget, we are going to have to make
some fundamental changes. The Federal Government operating commercial
needs is one that we can change and eliminate and reduce. Various
studies indicate that we could save up to $30 billion by utilizing
private sector resources. The Heritage Foundation estimates we could
save $9 billion annually. The Defense Science Board concluded the
Defense Department alone could save $30 billion annually.
So, the Freedom From Government Competition Act will help to create
jobs in the private sector, help open up markets to private business,
save billions of dollars and make Government more efficient. I
certainly commend this bill to my associates here in the Senate, to see
if we could not make a way to increase and strengthen the private
sector as well as save money to be used on these things that are
fundamentally Governmental in nature.
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