BNA ($) on how the private debt collection program wasn't killed yesterday:

The House passed the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (H.R. 2829) June 28 on a vote of 240-179 after House Democrats yielded to concerns about plans to shut down the Internal Revenue Service's private debt collection program.

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations Financial Services subcommittee, agreed to drop the language that would cut funding for the program to $1 million--$254 million below the Bush administration's request.

Republicans, led by House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Jim McCrery (R-La.), argued during debate on the House floor that eliminating the program would hamper the federal government's ability to collect tax debts and would reduce federal revenues. Because the bill also would restrict the Treasury Department's ability to raise and use revenues, McCrery said such a major change was in the jurisdiction of Ways and Means and should not be part of the appropriations bill.

Although the House Rules Committee June 26 gave Serrano the ability to waive all points of order with regard to that language, Serrano conceded that the measure should not be in the bill and agreed to strike the provision (Section 106) from the legislation.

Nonetheless, Serrano said he believed it was important to put the language in the bill and raise the issue on the House floor "so that people fully understand what it was that this subcommittee was trying to do."

Serrano said the whole idea of the language was to show that the government ought to be collecting its own money. He also objected to McCrery's argument that the provision would reduce the amount of money coming into the federal government, saying revenues would be unchanged if IRS officials were collecting the money instead of private services.

"At least historically we have had a situation where we knew that the person knocking at our door or on the phone was a member of the government, who had been trained in how to deal with the public and who fully understood what was within the law allowed in that conversation," Serrano said.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has updated its database of government contracting (you can also check out fedspending.org to search through contracting data). The House's website has interesting profiles of cases where contracting went wrong, and there's a very comprehensive report on contracting.

What it doesn't have is a good narrative to explain why all this stuff matters.

As far as I can tell, the dominant narrative goes something like this: corrupt politicians gave away contracts to companies that lined their pockets. That's why so much money is being wasted and contracting is growing.

But isn't that an anti-government message? Then it's the politicians and the agencies fault for all the waste in contracting. There's some truth to that, but is it the whole truth? And is it the message we want to be sending? All it implies, in terms of solutions, is that the corrupt politicians need to be kicked out, and government needs to be scaled down.

How about this for an alternative: most of the time, private companies aren't set up to do government work right. We asked them to do things they couldn't, so they wasted a lot of money. The solution is to make government do a better job of what it does best: government services.

The House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee may try to kill the private debt collection program by shutting off its funding. Here's the story:

The IRS' use of private debt collectors has retrieved millions in delinquent taxes but has raised questions about collection techniques and privacy rights. The House plans a vote this week on restricting the program's funds.

Democrats critical of the program since it was approved by a GOP Congress in 2004 included only $1 million for private debt collection in the 2008 budget for Treasury Department agencies.

Congress may make a move to strip language that would keep states from privatizing the provision of food stamps. The anti-privatization language, which would go in the Farm Bill, could be struck down despite the massive failure of a scheme to privatize the food stamp system in Texas.

Don't the privatizers get it? Government just does things like this better.