Pro-contractor caucus forming in the House

A House caucus focused on increasing the government’s use of contractors will launch next week, the Business Coalition for Fair Competition (BCFC) announced today.

Members of the “Yellow Pages” Caucus believe that if the government is performing a service that is being done by private businesses in the Yellow Pages, then the service should be subject to market competition, the BCFC said in an email and Facebook announcement. 

“This caucus is being created by a group of like-minded members of Congress to create a forum to work together to lower the cost of government, make it more efficient and get a better idea of what government and private enterprises should be doing,” said BCFC President John Palatiello.

The position of the caucus — currently drawing the interest of about 20 members — is that the private sector can often do commercial work at a lower cost than federal workers, Palatiello said. Letting businesses do that work would allow federal workers to focus on truly government-centric work, he said.

The BCFC advocates for policies that promote the use of private businesses in government and that stop agencies from competing with the private sector. 

Members of Congress have expressed concern over the push for insourcing in recent years, the moratorium on competitions between the private sector and federal employees for work, and policy revisions last year that added “closely associated with inherently governmental functions” to the list of jobs that should be done by government employees, Palatiello said. 

The caucus’s kickoff event will be at 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Capitol Triangle, just outside the Capitol Building on the House side.