Privatizers' Predicament / States face a Congress increasingly hostile to outsourcing.
Source: JONATHAN WALTERS, Governing Magazine, September 2007
...... After several years of relatively little congressional interest in this subject, the premise is coming under new scrutiny in a Congress newly controlled by Democrats. That is in no small part because of the string of recent privatization disasters that have befallen a variety of states in areas ranging from child protective services to Temporary Aid for Needy Families.
...... But if states want the right to use federal money to continue experimenting -- on privatization or any new strategy for doing the public's business -- then it's crucial that those experiments produce some tangible successes that can be demonstrated to the public. Otherwise, at least as long as the Democrats control Congress, there will be increased scrutiny in all program areas where states want to let their fingers do the walking and let the private sector do the work.