Small business interests are still protected

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Small business interests are still protected

For everyone that was concerned about the provisions buried in the Iraq funding bill, we as small businesses, are safe for now. Here’s a few excerpts from recent news articles in the Maryland Daily Record www.mddailyrecord.com
Please log onto their site for the full stories.

Set-aside prohibitions are defeated
LOUIS LLOVIO
Daily Record Business Writer

“…Congress stripped language from the final version of the Iraq war-spending bill sent to the president that would have done away with set-asides for small businesses and forced them to compete with larger companies for federal contracts. Sections 5001 and 5002 of the U.S. House of Representatives’ version of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health, Katrina Recovery and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007 would have prevented agencies that dole out more than $1 billion a year in government contracts from using set- asides in their procurement process.

Gloria Berthold, president of TargetGov at Marketing Outsource Associates Inc., a Baltimore government procurement consultant, worries that the issue could pop up again in other legislation. “What’s really scary is the thinking behind it,” she said...

Previously reported:
Defense bill imperils set-asides
As the nation kicks off National Small Business Week, a little-noticed section of the Iraq military appropriations legislation is working its way through Congress that could essentially strip away federal government set-asides and pit small businesses against multinational corporations for government contracts.

The standards instruct government agencies that award more than $1 billion in contracts annually to “develop and implement a plan to minimize the use of contracts entered into” other than by competitive means. That would eliminate set-asides, which are contracts awarded specifically to small businesses.

In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate appropriations committees dated April 16, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass. and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, who sit on the Senate’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, warn that small businesses could “effectively be driven out of the federal procurement process” if the section stands. “This language, while well intentioned,” the senators wrote, “has the potential to summarily invalidate all federal contracting set-aside programs and preferences for all small business concerns.”

“At stake here is nothing less than the loss of $80 billion in federal contracts currently received each year by small businesses all across America,” the senators wrote. But small business groups are hoping to defeat the measure before it gets to the president.

If the standards do survive, Gloria Berthold, president of TargetGov at Marketing Outsource Associates Inc., a Baltimore government procurement consultant, said they would abolish safeguards that allow small businesses to compete for lucrative government contracts.

“These new procedures would eliminate government contractors who are small businesses” she said. She is also concerned that even if the sections are defeated, now that they have been approved once, they will work their way back into other legislation. “What’s really scary is the thinking behind it,” she said. “It is a crisis, and even if the president vetoes the Iraq funding bill, in which this nasty piece of legislation is buried, this will resurface.”