Veto Threatened Over Contracting Provision

The policy statement also says that senior administration advisors would recommend a veto of the Treasury-Postal bill if it contains language aimed at limiting the use of numeric goals or quotas for putting federal jobs up for bids by contractors or for directly converting jobs to contract without formal cost comparisons. The administration has said it wants 15 percent of the jobs that are subject to contracting either put up for bid or directly contracted out by September 30, 2003, and that it ultimately wants the same done with half of all the estimated 850,000 federal jobs subject to contracting. Federal unions and their allies in Congress are backing language that would bar such goals on grounds that they are arbitrary and limit agencies’ abilities to structure themselves as they see fit. The Senate version of the Treasury-Postal measure contains a provision to ban numeric goals and a similar House amendment is pending.