President's Column - Contracting Out

Contracting out by this Administration and this Congress is an ever moving target and most time makes little or no sense. Take for example the Airport Screening positions. In the aftermath of September 11, Congress and others berated the system and said that the “contractors” were too lax, poorly trained and some may have had criminal records. This was in response to the fact that terrorists got through the screening methods, were able to board four airplanes with “weapons” and take them over and crash two of them into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon and only because of the heroic actions of the passengers, the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Congress then debated, cajoled and created a new federal agency, The Transportation Safety Administration. An agency was set up, a Director was appointed and the hiring process began. The screening process of the new federal employees was accomplished by contractors (possibly the same contractor who screened the non-federal employees previously) and the TSA was set up at all of the airports.

Airline passengers were x-rayed, screened, searched and “wanded” by the new federal employees. For the most part, there were few incidents of the screening not working, but this seemed to be more of equipment malfunction than employee error. The only “glitch” seemed to be that these federal employees wanted to be protected by the union and wanted to have the same protection under the Civil Service Reform as the other federal employees. This triggered a rash of “union busting” not seen since the early 1930s. Court cases, firings and a very hostile work environment, but the work went on almost flawlessly.

Now, Congress has authorized the Administration the use of “Contract screeners”. This is to give back to the same or similar private contractors the position of screening airport passengers, if the airport wants to use them. No one has declared that the federal system doesn’t work or that the private contractors can do a better or safer job. Just that airports can make the decision.

Then take the IRS, Congressional hearings were held because of the terrible methods of collecting the taxes with far-reaching and serious changes in providing a “gentler government” to the taxpayer. So now, with the gentler IRS tax scofflaws are rampant and Congress has now authorized private sector tax collectors to get the unpaid taxes from the beleaguered tax payer. A footnote, many of the defense contractors have a combined unpaid tax bill of 6 billion dollars. They are patriotic enough to get the work, but not patriotic enough to pay their share of taxes.

So, I can’t figure it out, in the two agencies mentioned, the work is being contracted out because the federal workers did exactly want Congress and the Administrating wanted them to do, efficiently and to the letter of the regulations. No mention of whether the contracting out will save money or is a worth-while endeavor, just seems to be contacting out for the sake of contracting out.