[NOTE: See UPDATE below]
In The Set-Aside Boondoggle, Heather Mac Donald persuasively argues:
- “Minority quota programs virtually force companies into deception, since there are not enough competent minority-owned companies to fill the quotas…”;
- “And when “disadvantaged” companies do actually participate on a project, rather than just acting as fronts, their suboptimal skills can require the hiring of additional workers to oversee or redo the quota employees’ contribution”;
- “Government set-aside programs actually require ineffiency in infrastructure projects by demanding that the least competitive contractors be hired to work on them”;
- “Success in a contracting business disqualifies a contractor from being designated as a “minority business enterprise.” Only contractors with a net worth below $750,000 and a relatively low annual income may participate”;
- “… the bureaucracy required to oversee these programs is reason enough to cut them out…”;
- “Bias is not preventing minorities and women from entering the contracting field and prospering within it…. [T]he real problem underlying minority underrepresentation in the construction business is inadequate skills”;
- “As for women, their continuing appetite for quotas is nauseating…. If they are not proportionally represented in the building trades, it’s because they are going to law and medical school instead”;
- “Municipal-bond issuers have to pay a toll to firms that exist solely because of minority-underwriting requirements”;
- “And then there’s the humongous “Equal Employment Opportunity” infrastructure within each government agency, made up of hacks whose only job is to count the number of minority and female employees in that agency — something a computer could do — and pretend eternal vigilance against the alleged menace of bias that threatens at every moment to break out among white-collar government employees, many of whom are minorities themselves.
Given all that, it’s easy to see why liberals are so addicted to these programs.
UPDATE [1 December]
Roger Clegg chimes in: Kudos indeed to Heather Mac Donald for her post urging some enterprising young U.S. Representative to take on racial set-asides in government contracting. And while the legislative option is being pursued, it is also worth challenging these programs in court, as has been done with considerable success in recent years (for example, a federal court of appeals struck down the Defense Department’s program on the same day Barack Obama was elected president). The conservative Pacific Legal foundation and the Center for Equal Opportunity have drafted a model brief for those so inclined.
