Bush administration is eager to privatize federal jobs

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Suppose your spouse brought home a leaner, fitter version of you and asked that you train your lovely replacement before you moved out.

Uncle Sam wants to do just that -- on a grander scale -- in the drive to privatize up to 400,000 federal jobs.

Internal Revenue Service tax collectors would be asked to train private bill collectors who would then get a portion of whatever they brought home. National Park Service workers would be asked to show theme park personnel where such sites as Old Faithful and Mammoth Cave are, so that they could replace the feds.

And private sector types, after receiving (one hopes) top government training, would be told to report to a control tower so that they could start directing aerial traffic.

The Bush administration is doing nearly all it can to make a case that anything that the feds are doing -- that also is being duplicated in the private sector -- should be considered for outsourcing.

A National Institutes of Health employee said all federal jobs would have to pass the Yellow Pages litmus test. That is, if your job (computer specialist, lawyer, accountant, etc.) is listed in the services section of that good book, it should be put on the things-to-be-farmed-out list.

As a result, opponents of privatization (mostly congressional Democrats and federal unions) are using a variety of tactics to block, or delay, privatization.

The National Treasury Employees Union warns that hiring private, work-on-commission tax collectors would be worse than the IRS at its worst.

Opponents of a plan to privatize some National Park Service jobs are playing the diversity card. They say that because Uncle Sam is the largest employer of minorities, turning over jobs to the private sector could hurt minorities the most.