The new budget contains some zingers, including repeal of newly enacted legislation to prohibit privatization. You can access budget information here.

The NTEU is in the forefront on this issue. Here is their assessment:

Washington — Language in the president’s FY 2009 budget indicating the administration would seek to repeal newly-enacted federal law that provides a more level playing field for federal employees in the fight to retain the work of the public in their hands drew strong criticism from the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees.

“Congress got it right when it enacted much-needed and key improvements in federal contracting rules,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “Despite the desire of the White House to turn over as much federal work as it can to the private sector, we are not going to let them run from this important commitment to fairness and to the fundamental need to spend federal dollars in ways most advantageous to the taxpayers.”

Kelley has long led the fight against runaway federal contracting. Most recently, that battle resulted in congressional approval of language, in the fiscal 2008 omnibus spending bill, that extends to federal workers the same rights to appeal agency contracting decisions that have long been available to contractors.

Moreover, it prevents contractors from offering substandard—or no—health or retirement benefits to its employees as a means of gaining an unfair advantage in bidding against federal employees for work from government agencies; and it requires that private sector bids for federal work show a savings of $10 million or 10 percent beyond the cost of keeping the work in the hands of trained, accountable federal employees. Such restrictions were made permanent and government-wide.

“The fact is,” President Kelley said, “that one of the key problems with such contracting is that it falls far short of the public interest.”

The issues include contracts where the work is ill-performed, where the ultimate cost is greater than the initial bid by the private company, and where federal employees have to be called in to rescue a contractor who has not been able to hold up its end of the bargain with the government.

“The overwhelming evidence is that the most efficient and effective way to get federal work performed is by using trained, dedicated federal employees,” Kelley said.

According to the BNA report on the budget:

Calling for agencies to continue identifying future opportunities for "competitive sourcing," or public-private job competitions where private sector firms can bid for the right to perform functions performed by federal employees, the budget request says the administration will work with Congress to eliminate the new legislative restrictions.

Among the contracting out restrictions from the DOD bill that should be repealed, according to the budget proposal, are:

provisions requiring public-private competitions, including the formation of an agency "most efficient organization" (MEO), before the conversion of agency functions involving more than 10 federal employees;

provisions requiring contractors to show savings of at least 10 percent or $10 million;

provisions stating that contractors cannot receive a cost advantage over federal agencies by spending less on health insurance or retirement benefits than the government does for federal employees;

provisions allowing federal agencies to hold competitions to evaluate the benefits of converting work currently being performed by contractors to performance by federal employees; and

provisions allowing federal employees to designate agents authorized to protest the results of competitive sourcing decisions.

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