THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 21, 1995 TAG: 9507210014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
The federal government can spend $3.4 million quicker than you can say ``Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.'' It should take Congress no longer to pass Republican legislation to eliminate the Baldrige Quality Award program from the Commerce Department budget. (It should take considerably longer, if at all, to approve the giant step included in the same legislation: elimination of the Commerce De-part-ment.)
Created by Congress to honor Malcolm Baldrige, the former secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration who was killed in a horse-riding accident in 1987, the awards are intended to promote quality awareness, recognize quality achievements of U.S. companies and publicize successful quality strategies. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of businesses have applied. Mostly corporate giants have won. The award task force of the Council of Competitiveness, a coalition of chief executives from business, labor unions and colleges and universities, wants the awards expanded to include schools, health-care organizations and government agencies.
Expanding quality programs is a great idea. Spending taxpayers' money to do it is not. Three million may not be much, in the context of the federal budget. But it's even less in the context of the private sector.
Surely with the number of trade publications, meetings, conventions, talk shows and other outlets available in the private sector, companies can find some other way to spread the word of successful quality management. And surely various industries, agencies and educational institutions, like showbiz types, can bestow awards on each other without taxpayers paying the tab. by CNB