A Civil War-era agency would lose its government printing monopoly under a Bush administration requirement for competitive bids on some $500 million in yearly contracts.
"The time has come for the executive branch to liberate its agencies from a monopoly that unfairly penalizes both taxpayers and efficient would-be competitors," budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said in a memo Friday to federal agencies.
The Office of Management and Budget, headed by Daniels, estimated the government would save $50 million to $70 million annually in printing and copying contracts now handled exclusively by the Government Printing Office.
That is the amount in special fees the GPO charges when it acts as a middleman by contracting out printing jobs to private companies, the office said.
The White House directive would eliminate the middleman role and allow private companies -- as well as the government office -- to bid for the work.
GPO spokesman Andrew Sherman said the plan would increase costs by 50 percent because companies would have to hire large sales forces to search for government contracts. The plan also would destroy the GPO's program that deposits federal records in 1,300 libraries, he added.
"The costs and the threat to public access to government information are so significant that Congress rejected this in 1987 and in 1994," Sherman said.
He said GPO collects $33 million in fees, not $50 million to $70 million, and pointed out the money earned is a substitute for government appropriations.
The GPO sends 84 percent of its work to private contractors to handle the huge workload. It publishes everything from the Congressional Record to public laws, Defense Department technical manuals and Agriculture Department cookbooks.
