Soon after President Obama signed into law a fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill including an amendment to halt job competitions through the end of fiscal 2009, federal employee organizations set their sights on continuing the ban in the upcoming fiscal year.
The amendment, offered by the chairs of the Senate and House financial services appropriations subcommittees, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., also includes language requiring in-sourcing studies of some jobs that have been outsourced, such as those flagged for poor contractor performance, or that were outsourced without a competition. Similar language had been enacted previously affecting just DoD; the new language makes those restrictions government-wide.
Employee organizations hope to continue a moratorium on new cost studies by adding language to appropriations bills that Congress will consider in the months ahead for the budget year that starts October 1. Separately, they might be able to achieve an even longer moratorium at DoD; language to set a three-year ban there passed the House last year as part of a defense authorization bill but was dropped in the interests of getting a measure acceptable to the Bush administration. Since DoD accounts for a large portion of the jobs studied for conversion to the private sector, a lengthy ban there would effectively stop the program for all practical purposes until the 2012 Presidential election.
