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The House Small Business Committee approved a bill on Thursday designed to increase opportunities for veterans to have a larger role in procurement of federal contracts.

The measure (H.R. 3867) as passed by 21-4 vote. The passage was bipartisan, with four Republicans voting to adopt the bill. It gives priority to service-disabled veterans in contracting and implements a the Small Business Administration Women's Procurement Program, which House Small Business Chairwoman Lydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., said had taken too much time.

The bill places veterans who are small business owners at the top of the priority list for receiving federal contracts. Velazquez said the move would "eliminate the barriers that veterans face in receiving non-competitive contracts."

The committee struck down an amendment from Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., 16-8 to strike a subsection of the section from the bill that required veteran business owners be given priority.

The subsection that Bartlett wanted to strike would remove a competitive element from HUB Zone contract procurement in the event of multiple HUB Zone businesses submitting contract offers. The HUB Zone is a SBA program designed to employ people and place businesses in historically underutilized business districts in rural and urban areas.

Bartlett was opposed to the part of the bill, warning that it "denies the benefits taxpayers get from competition."

Democrats said striking that section would harm veterans' business ownership opportunities. Bartlett and House Small Business Committee Ranking member Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said they were not opposed to reducing veterans' opportunities.

Velazquez said that veterans have received less than 1 percent of federal contracting.

The bill also implements an executive order from the Bush Administration that set forward a goal of no less than 3 percent participation by service-disabled veteran businesses in federal contracting.

To implement the executive order, the bill requires the Small Business Administration to provide service-disabled veterans the proper education, information and training for participating in the federal contracting process.

The bill also sought to provide more procurement opportunities for women by fully implementing the SBA's Women's Procurement Program. The program allows for the waiver of competition requirements in contracting if two or more offers come from female majority-owned businesses that are economically disadvantaged and are in an industry where female businesses are underrepresented.

Every five years, the head of the SBA must also conduct a study to identify industries in which female-owned businesses are underrepresented.

The bill also extends the program length for the 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business Program, which provides assistance to socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses. The original length of the program for a business was nine years.

Bartlett offered, but then withdrew and amendment that would have prevented the change in the length of program from occurring. Bartlett said nine years was enough for a business to mature, but Velazquez insisted an extra year would make a big difference.

COMMENTS

• Women own and CONTROL, IN THE DAY TO DAY OPERATION, more than 23% of the businesses in the United States and are represented in the Fortune 500. What was that about smoke and mirrors? Nevertheless, these businesses receive less than 6% of federal contracts. There may be no law that gave men more right to contracts than women. What needs to be fixed is prejudice. Ellen McEachern Posted October 24, 2007 6:26 PM
• keep in mind that the Prison Industries and NISH are superior selections in terms of set asides. Both have been virtually static despite the order of perference. Programs have little influence upon awards since they are all subverted at teh Contracting level. The Contracting Officers do not have positive or negative pay incentive to select one contracting perference over another; aside from workplace peer influence maybe. A contractor which belongs to a protected group is faced with a daunting task: sell. Step on what ever program gets in the way. As we invent programs, we event greater devisiveness and deviate behaviors. What happened to the American blend? Why promote class protection? Do we want class distinction? If so, keep up the good work procurement folks! Ralph Wahlberg Posted October 23, 2007 10:50 AM
• Can someone explain why we owe it to women to give them extra benifits? Was I asleep when they took away women's rights? I don't remember any laws which gave men more rights than women. They can go to the same schools and apply for the same license and loans as men. I can see the veteran thing more than the woman thing since these men and women actually their lives on hold to serve their country. I guess one could even argue against that reasoning since they all volunteered to serve and had a contract which indicated their pay and benifits which I'm sure didn't include contract priviledges. The next thing we'll be hearing is contract priviledges for homosexuals or little people. As I've posted in the past most of these women owned businesses are nothing but smoke and mirrors since they are built upon false premises. This is nothing but crooked politicians buying votes at the expense of our tax dollars because you can be sure the program and contracts will cost the tax payers more money. Have I missed something? Why are we giving women extra benifits and priorities? It's all about politics. SATOS Posted October 22, 2007 7:53 AM