Your biggest competitor might be good ol’ Uncle Sam

At one time or another, most bus and motorcoach companies know the pain of competing with a competitor that uses taxpayer dollars to compete against them. After all, there are 6,730 public transit systems in the United States today—more than double the number of private bus and motorcoach companies. Not too long ago, all public transit systems were owned and operated by private companies.

The federal government seems to be in everyone’s business today, from printing to transportation to meeting space. Using taxpayer subsidies, they often attract your best employees, steal business opportunities and stifle economic growth and wealth.

The Freedom from Government Competition Act, H.R. 1339 was designed to halt these practices and reverse the trend. The bill states that unfair government competition with the private sector of the economy is detrimental to the United States economic system and that unfair government competition with the private sector of the economy is at an unacceptably high level, both in scope and in dollar volume.

If passed, the bill would require each executive or military department or independent establishment to obtain all goods and services necessary for or beneficial to the accomplishment of its authorized functions by procurement from private sources. That is the case unless such goods or services are required by law to be produced or performed by such agency; or the agency determines and certifies that federal production, manufacture or provision of a good or service is necessary for the national defense or homeland security; that a good or service is so critical to the agency’s mission or so inherently governmental in nature that it is in the public interest to require production or performance by government employees; or that there is no private source capable of providing the good or service.

This bill requires such private sector provision of goods and services to be performed through: (1) the divestiture of federal involvement, (2) the award of a contract using competitive procedures, or (3) conducting a public-private competitive sourcing analysis in accordance with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) procedures and determining that using the private sector is in the best interest of the United States and provides the best value to the taxpayer.

By giving private companies a level playing field in providing goods and services that are unnecessarily duplicated by the federal government, the bill will spur private job creation and protect taxpayer interests.

This bill gets the UMA “green light,” so let your Congressional representative know you want their support for passage of H. R. 1339, The Freedom from Government Competition Act.

 

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