[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Page 23740]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             VA OUTSOURCING

  Mr. BROWN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the amendment I will be calling up later this morning 
does not change current law. It simply reminds the Veterans' 
Administration to abide by current law. All Federal agencies are bound 
by certain rules when they outsource jobs. While the Department of 
Defense has its own set of rules, every other Federal agency, including 
the Veterans' Administration, is required to take the same 
straightforward steps to ensure that when outsourcing occurs, which 
sometimes it needs to, it actually improves upon the status quo, not 
outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing or to feed private contractors 
but outsourcing to serve taxpayers and, in the case of the VA, veterans 
better. If any Federal agency should be required to show a good reason 
before displacing Government workers, it should be the Veterans' 
Administration. That is because so many VA employees are actually 
veterans themselves. Arbitrarily firing veterans is not only wrong, it 
is shortsighted. The obstacles to employment are steep enough for 
veterans in too many cases without throwing unjustifiable outsourcing 
into the mix.
  Even if we put that aside, taxpayers are not well served when 
Government contracts are handed out without regard to the costs or 
benefits that result. That is one of the many lessons we should have 
learned from Katrina. It is a lesson we are learning over and over from 
Iraq. These lessons don't seem to be sinking in with the 
administration. The VA is firing many of its blue-collar workers and 
replacing them with private contractors without going through the 
competition process that Congress has called for again and again. It is 
bad enough that the VA is moving forward without actually figuring out 
what is in the best interest of taxpayers. Sometimes outsourcing jobs 
makes sense. More often than not, as we have found, it doesn't. But 
that question should be asked before any outsourcing is done in every 
single case.
  Making matters worse, four-fifths of the blue-color jobs targeted for 
outsourcing were held by veterans. So the Veterans' Administration is 
outsourcing Government jobs held by veterans to go to private 
contractors without proving that it is actually saving money. This is 
more than a paycheck or a path to independence. Sidestepping the rules 
to eliminate their jobs is bad business and bad policy.
  I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

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