Competitive Sourcing Has Saved Taxpayers Billions of Dollars Over the Years
Washington D.C. – Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist today celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of President Eisenhower\’s executive order which forced the federal government to open non-essential, commercial jobs to Yellow Pages-style competition.
President Bush reinvigorated this directive in 2001. As part of the President\’s Management Agenda, all federal agencies must identify those jobs which are commercial in nature (i.e. cafeteria workers, gardeners, etc.) Those agencies are then judged on how aggressively they let the existing workforce compete with private-sector bidders.
"There is no reason that such commercial, non-governmental jobs as security guards and chefs should be the exclusive domain of expensive, unionized government bureaucrats," said Norquist. "Let the security guard firm in any major private sector building in Washington compete for that job, saving taxpayers money."
The Office of Management and Budget reports that there are currently 400,000 federal employees doing commercial work. If all of those were competitively sourced, between $5 billion and $7 billion would be saved annually. For every job that is competed, more than $12,000 is currently saved (no matter who wins the competition).
"Competitive sourcing just makes sense," continued Norquist. "Everywhere else in America, there is competition for jobs and services. Why should the federal government be exempt?"