Aren’t You Glad You Don’t Get All the Government You Pay For?
LESA BULLETIN 2002-009 IFPTE LOCAL 28
AFL-CIO & CLC
Virginia A. Cantwell, President
December 2002
As I recall, Will Rodgers used to ask that question as a regular part of his comedy routine. The line probably always got a laugh with its somewhat cynical view of the inefficiency and ill-results of the government. Well, if you are one of the people who laughed along with Will on that remark, prepare to laugh a lot harder in the future because you are about to get a lot less government than you pay for.
What is going to be tickling your funny bone night and day is President Bush’s plan to outsource 850,000 of the approximately 1.8 million federal jobs. Quite frankly, he has big political debts to pay off and the federal payroll is going to be his personal checking account. He is targeting engineers, technologists, computer people, and the like, probably because they get bigger salaries than file clerks and secretaries and, thus, represent the cream of the political-payoff crop. President Bush says this will level the playing field, lead to more effective government, put a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Sort of reminds you of Charles Robb who admitted he was in the hotel room with the naked girl (that wasn’t his wife), but only got a massage. Yep. I believe them both.
Now a lot of you out there probably think that we are just a bunch of cry-baby civil servants who don’t want to give up our cushy federal jobs. Everybody gets downsized once in a while, why not the Feds? Well, if we were really downsizing, I might have to agree with you. If Federal sales were off 47% for the second quarter in a row, you would have a good argument for cutting 47% of the workforce. The only flaw in that argument is that sales aren’t off (we don’t sell anything, we mostly give it away and that business is always strong) and President Bush is not actually cutting the workforce at all – he’s just outsourcing it to Boeing and Lockheed, General Dynamics and IBM, to whoever and whatever made the right campaign gift. There will still be 1.8 million people doing federal jobs, but 850,000 of the better-paid ones will have a percentage skimmed off the top of their paychecks by President Bush’s political buddies.
“I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field” –
Albert Einstein
Another little thing that might interest you is to take a small peek into the system that is going to do this thing for the American People. The folks who generate the inventory of each inherently non-governmental activity to be “competitively sourced” must provide a reason code for the activity. The reason code states the basis upon which the sourcing judgment is to be made. There is one that says price is the determining factor, but predictably the White House casts a disapproving eye on too much use of that one. The one President Bush favors is reason code C – neglect its use and your inventory will be returned by courier for a little rethinking. This dandy states that it is so important to have the right person on the job, whether contractor or civil servant, that price is simply not a factor.
On the surface reason code C sounds good – got to have the right guy, the right skills, the critical abilities. But look at it from the underside for a moment. Bush Brothers, Inc. strides into Mission Control and takes a look-see at Gene Kranz, flight director, hero of Apollo missions to the moon, who almost single-handedly got Apollo 13 back in one piece (well, maybe there were one or two other guys that helped). Bush Brothers looks things over and then whispers into the right political appointee’s ear that Gene is old (yes, I know he has already retired) and has diminished abilities – he doesn’t have the right stuff any more. Bush Brothers has a better guy, a younger guy, a guy who has flown countless model rockets (only a few of which crashed into the neighbor’s house), and they can probably lure him in and put him in place for a mere $750,000 a year ($100,000 a year for the kid, $500,000 a year for Bush Brothers, Inc., and $150,000 a year for the political appointee, although this distribution won’t quite make it into the accounting breakdown since Bush Brothers is not publicly traded and still uses Arthur Andersen).
Outrageous you say. We were only paying Gene Kranz $100,000 a year as a civil servant, or maybe $125,000. What idiot would multiply that number by 6 or 7 for a kid who has never done this before? No way! But the political appointee thinks of his $150,000 a year in “honoraria” (that will magically start to flow after he leaves government “service” in a year or two) and smiles at reason code C. Says cost doesn’t matter, doesn’t it. A factor of 6, a factor of 7 – who cares? The taxpayers are footing the bill and they voted for Dubya, maybe twice. Let Clinton Associates, Inc. offer to do it for $500,000 a year – cost still doesn’t matter and Dubya probably won’t be getting too many donations from Billary. Might want to see if Liddy’s Dole, Inc. wants to raise the ante to $1,000,000 a year for this one, but maybe switching horses just now wouldn’t be quite it. Now, a little paperwork from Bush Brothers, Inc. documenting the incredible skills of the “competitively sourced” person and we’re in business. Sum up that $500,000 a year overhead charge that Bush Brothers, Inc. will make on each of the 9,000 people they will provide to NASA and there ought to be enough for a good-sized campaign contribution to Dubya next time around, and to whatever good Republican follows him after that.
Predictably, President Bush sees this excellent system as vital to the country. So vital, in fact, that he intends to push it right forward without waiting for any input from the Congress. Maybe that’s because some of the folks in Congress plan to be around after Dubya hits the road and might not take too well to his utterly wrecking the government that they have to stand in front of every election or so.
In closing, let me just mangle a line President Kennedy used once: “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you because if this crooked-as-a-safety-pin idea goes through, you would just laugh too hard when I told you.”
Dr. Jones is available through e-mail at William.H.Jones@grc.nasa.gov and also reads the grc.talk newsgroup regularly; however, he reserves the right to say nothing at his convenience.
Next union meeting Wednesday, December 11, 2002 Building 15, Room 101 12 Noon
