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Friday, May 11, 2007
House Passes Small Business Contracting Bill
Yesterday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 409 - 13 a bill designed to increase the percentage of federal contracts awarded to small businesses and limit the bundling of small projects and work orders into gigantic contracts. The White House declared their opposition to H.R. 1873 earlier this week, but stopped short of saying President Bush would veto it should it reach his desk. That's a pretty good thing since the vote in the House is more than enough to override a veto by the president.
After the House Small Business committee approved the bill on April 24, it was sent to the Oversight and Government Reform committee, where a number of the bill's provisions were scaled back or weakened. Before the bill was passed on the floor however, amendments were adopted to restore the original version approved by the Small Business committee. This version would increase the federal government small business procurement goal to 30 percent.
The Senate Small Business committee is reported to be drafting similar legislation.
Posted by Adam Hughes
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