Implementing Management For Performance And Related Reforms To Obtain Value In Every Acquisition Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, my amendment addresses the role that small businesses can play in helping our Defense Department and the men and women in uniform who ultimately are benefited by a properly functioning acquisition process.

Now, there is not an elected official anywhere who won't tell you that small businesses are the key engines of economic growth for communities across our country, including Milwaukee, which I have the honor to represent. We've heard this statement countless times.

According to the Department of Defense, small business is the key to sustaining and improving our industrial base and to maintain competition and innovation. Yet despite congressional efforts to encourage the participation of small economically and socially disadvantaged businesses, including those owned by veterans, small businesses, in Defense Department acquisitions, concerns remain about bundled contracts and the ability of those businesses to fully participate on a level playing field against larger defense contractors.

I know I have heard these concerns from businesses in my district, including just this morning. I'm sure that my colleagues can share similar stories. When the rubber hits the road at the Department of Defense, small businesses find a giant pothole waiting for them in pursuing contracts.

If we are to reform this broken acquisition system, which is the goal of this bipartisan bill, we need to ensure that it is working for small businesses as well. We can't do that without assessing how well it is working for those businesses now, and that's what my amendment intends to do.

My amendment calls upon the Department, when developing measures to assess contractor performance as called for in this bill before us, to specifically measure how the prime contractors themselves are involving small businesses, including those owned by veterans, women, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, as well as subcontractors. If I'm not mistaken, Federal law requires that large Federal prime contractors receiving Federal contracting exceeding $550,000--and $1 million in the case of construction--on a contract which offers subcontracting opportunities must have subcontracting plans with goals that provide maximum opportunities to these small businesses.

I am so pleased that the bill already would require the Department to look at the excessive use of contract bundling which has previously been identified as an obstacle for small businesses competing for DOD contracts. And I also know that in the report accompanying this bill, the House Armed Services Committee urged the Department to develop a metric for small business utilization as part of the new assessment tools the bill requires. My amendment supports that goal.

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. It is time that the rhetoric meets reality. Small business is the key to economic growth in our country and ensuring that small businesses can compete and that the Defense Department gets the products, services and goods it needs on time and on budget, which are not mutually exclusive goals. But unfortunately for small businesses, business as usual at the DOD and too many other Federal agencies means little or no business for them.

Innovation is not the exclusive domain of large companies. Small businesses are innovative. In fact, they may have a greater incentive to be innovative because that innovation is what may allow them to successfully compete against larger firms. When we put all of America's ingenuity to work, it benefits our military, our taxpayers, and our communities.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on my amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

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