Unless the money in your pocket or the money to pay for your tuition comes from a government employee, the Bush Administration's plan to privatize as many as 850,000 government jobs is not as likely to spark your interest as is, say, the new Christina Aguilera album. However, if you are a believer in the two-party system, you should pay attention to this plan, which is just as "dirty."
For those of you who haven't been following this story, on Nov. 15, the Administration announced that it would seek to place up to 850,000 government jobs up for competitive bidding by private contractors. Officials claim that these jobs include functions such as running cafeterias in federal buildings and cutting lawns. Coincidentally, this announcement came about a week before the Senate passed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security after weeks of delays due to a dispute as to whether or not the new department should be exempt from federal work rules.
As with any large political program, it is useful to assess the reasons why the Bush Administration would want to privatize half of the federal workforce right after a major election.
The most benign reason for the announcement is that Bush believes the government needs to spend less money since tax cuts and the War on Terror (now featuring Iraq!) has opened up a yawning budget deficit. Private contractors, so the reasoning goes, will do the same services for less money because they can competitively bid and many don't have unionized employees.
Paul Krugman points out in Tuesday's New York Times that most of the federal budget goes to defense spending, debt service and entitlements like Social Security. In fact, the affected federal workforce counts for only around 2 percent of the federal budget; even taking the administration's far-fetched assumptions of tremendous savings, privatizing all of those federal employees would make less of a dent on the deficit than a small shift in interest rates or the cancellation of a weapons program in existence only to satisfy a Member of Congress with an important committee assignment.
The claims of gains (as small as they would be) are dubious at best. The greatest benefits from privatization occur when a government gets out of a business the private sector should be doing anyway, like extracting oil or providing telephone service, as was the case in many countries. Despite jokes about DMV employees (who don't work for the federal government anyway) and stereotypes about government workers, our civil service is among the most efficient and fairest in the world. Unlike many other countries, bribery and corruption within the professional civil service itself are essentially confined to scattered unrelated incidents.
Therefore, efficiency is probably not the Administration's primary goal -- the small gains, if any, would take years to achieve and wouldn't be worth the fuss caused by unions.
If you want to see why the Administration wants to privatize so much of the civil service, think about the fuss caused by unions. See, the unions are the main financial backers of the Democratic Party and the federal government employs a sizable chunk of the unionized workforce. Therefore, if those unionized jobs are eliminated in favor of non-union contract workers, the Democratic Party would be at an even greater financial disadvantage for future elections.
The destruction of unions will have consequences beyond campaign funding. To quote a bumper sticker, the members of the labor movement are "the people who brought you the weekend." Crushing the union movement would silence the primary voice for workplace safety and workers' rights. History should also serve as a warning. Destruction of the union movement has been a hallmark of fascist governments from Pinochet's Chile to Nazi Germany. This is not to imply that the Bush administration is equivalent to these dictators, but that unions often serve as a bulwark against rightist extremism.
It would be bad enough if this were limited to destroying the Democratic Party's funding base and silencing worker-rights advocates, but the horrors of a privatized federal government include increased risk of bribery and fraud.
Any regular viewer of The Sopranos can tell you that politicians on the take from corrupt private contractors can ignore lowest-bid requirements and give their cronies' companies contracts they don't deserve in exchange for cash, legally through campaigns as well as under the table.
Former Providence, R.I. Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci is now a convicted felon, sentenced to five years of probation in lieu of jail for the above type of fraud.
A former contracting agent in northern New Jersey (of all places) admitted that he got bribes of cash, a boat and free home improvements from two contractors.
Stories like this are numerous and can be found around the country. It makes sense, considering how easy it is for elected politicians to steer government contracts to whoever bribes them or donates to their campaigns, which explains why the Bush Administration announced the plans only after the Republicans took over all three branches of government.
Think about the history of political machines, such as the Tweed Ring in New York City. One-party control lasted for decades because Tamany Hall politicians directed government contracts to businesses that kicked back money to the machine, which would spend the kick-backs on bribes to voters.
There is also a reason why it's so hard for government employees to be fired. Whereas under the "spoils system" of Andrew Jackson, all manner of government jobs were appropriated by the winning party, civil service reform created a merit-based method for hiring employees. If you think government employees are incompetent now, just imagine what would happen if the whole workforce shifted every four or eight years from one set of coddled campaign-manager's flunky sons for another.
If you want the federal government to be as corrupt, larded and dominated by Republicans for the next three decades, go ahead and ignore the Administration's civil service plans. If you believe in two-party governance, workplace safety and honest politicians, pay attention.
Charles Donefer can be reached at cdonefer@jhunewsletter.com.
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