SB Reauthorization Act Summary_ Oct 15

Summary of the U.S. Senate version of the Small Business Reauthorization Act
Date: October 15, 2003

The House Small Business Committee passed its bill and the bill is awaiting full House floor action. When the House will act is uncertain at this point. The House leadership, at the request of the SBA, has put a hold on the bill (meaning the bill will not move).
Differences between the final House version and the Senate passed version will result in a conference. The Conference Committee, consisting of Members of both the House and Senate Small Business Committees, will resolve the differences in both bills and come up with a final bill.

Among the provisions that remained untouched was the women's procurement program provision. This provision requires the GAO (an independent investigative arm of Congress) to complete the much disputed "under representation of industry study" which has stood in the way of implementing the women's business designation for contracts as passed by P.L. 106-554.
The study is to be completed by December 31, 2003 and requires all agencies to cooperate with the GAO to complete its study. This provision was not changed from the original bill.

You can find the text of the bill at: http:\\thomas.loc.gov and typing in the bill number and choosing the bill as passed by the Senate- September 26.

CHANGES MADE TO TITLE IV - PROCUREMENT

1. Section 402. Agency Accountability.
Original bill provision: As reported by Committee would have (1) withheld a portion of a performance-related bonus awarded to procurement officials for failure to achieve small business goals; (2) directed agencies to include in the annual performance evaluation for agency procurement officials a factor that measures the success of that official in small business utilization.

CHANGE IN MANAGERS AMENDMENT

Provision withdrawn. The Senate Government Affairs Committee was concerned that this was changing civil service employment provisions and not the prerogative of the Small Business Committee.

2. Section 403. Small Business Participation in Prime Contracting Original bill provision. Required that orders valued at more than $2,500 but not more than $100,000 on multiple contract vehicles, such as GSA's Federal Supply Service and GWACs be reserved for purchase only from small business.

CHANGE IN MANAGERS AMENDMENT:

The final bill rather than designating these purchases for small business requires contracting officers to give serious consideration to small businesses seeking to provide goods and services. In addition, the Congress asks for a report every 180 days on government purchasing through small business on the FSS and GWAC schedules. This provision was substantially weakened.

Actual bill language on this provision:

"In the case of orders under multiple award contracts, including Federal Supply Schedule contracts and multi-agency contracts, that are subject to the small business reserve, contracting officers shall consider not less than 2 small business concerns if such small business concerns can offer the items sought by the contracting officer on competitive terms, with respect to price, quality, and delivery schedule, with the goods or services available in the market.; `(B) If only 1 small business concern can satisfy the requirement, the contracting officer shall include such small business concern in their evaluation."

3. Section 403. Small Business Participation in Prime Contracting Original bill provision. Required buys from multiple award contracts to meet the 23% small business goal required in other government purchases.

CHANGE IN MANAGERS AMENDMENT

Provision withdrawn.

Section 406. Direct Payment to Subcontractors Original bill provision. Requires direct payment to sub if prime did not
pay. The original language stated that a contracting officer must consider ``all reasonable issues regarding the subcontractor's performance, or lack of performance, before making a determination that the prime contractor failed in its responsibility to timely pay a small business subcontractor.'' This is a new section to the law, which establishes a 3-year pilot program to enable the government to make direct payments to subcontractors if the primes fail to do so.

CHANGE IN MANAGERS AMENDMENT

The managers' amendment modifies the language to ensure that a contracting officer can consider ``all reasonable issues regarding the circumstances surrounding the failure to make timely payment to a small business subcontractor'' before making a determination to make a direct payment to the subcontractor under a pilot program to test direct payments to small business contractors. Although this section does not do away with the direct payment section, it does make it more difficult to recoup a direct payment for the subcontractor from the government by triggering more extensive review by the government contracting officer before making the payment. In reality, this section was significantly weakened.