On Monday, Paul Krugman wrote a good column ($) on government outsourcing. A key point: It's now clear that there's a fundamental error in the antigovernment ideology embraced by today's conservative movement. Conservatives look at the virtues of market competition and leap to the conclusion that private ownership, in itself, is some kind of magic elixir. But there's no reason to assume that a private company hired to perform a public service will do better than people employed directly by the government. In fact, the private company will almost surely do a worse job if its political connections insulate it from accountability -- which has, of course, consistently been the case under Mr. Bush. The inspectors' report on Afghanistan's police conspicuously avoided assessing DynCorp's performance; even as government auditors found fault with Landstar, the company received a plaque from the Department of Transportation honoring its hurricane relief efforts. And at the last minute, Congress passed a short-term funding fix for the State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) that will prevent cuts in services until at least May, according to the Congressional Research Service (Sorry, a link to the CRS report quoted below is unavailable at the moment). The SCHIP provisions of H.R. 6164 delay shortfalls to the first part of May 2007, according to current CRS projections. Although the provisions redistribute an additional $125 million for projected FY2007 shortfalls, the shortfalls remaining for the rest of the fiscal year are projected at $716 million. UPDATE: Here's the CRS report.