Procurement Leftovers on Congress’s Plate Congress returns for its election-year session this month to face several pieces of unfinished legislation that could make important changes in federal procurement. President Bush put one set of changes on hold when he pocket-vetoed the 2008 Defense authorization bill on unrelated grounds. The president concluded that a provision of the bill would tie up assets of the new Iraqi government in lawsuits over alleged crimes committed by former President Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration urged Congress to move quickly to fix the bill. The defense bill, H.R. 1585, would place limits on time-and-materials contracts and allow protests on task orders worth more than $10 million. Industry generally opposes both provisions. Both houses of Congress passed contracting bills last year, but many differences remain to be worked out in a House-Senate conference. Both the sponsor of the House bill, Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-CA, and the Senate sponsor, Susan Collins, R-ME, said they want to rein in sole-source contracts and promote competition. In March the House approved Waxman’s Accountability in Contracting Act, H.R. 1362, over the objections of the Bush administration and industry. It would require agencies to minimize the use of sole-source contracts and to use fixed-price type contracts as much as possible. Agencies would be required to publish their justifications and approvals for sole-source contracts over $1 million. The Senate in November passed Collins’s Accountability in Government Contracting Act, S. 680. It would extend the Defense Department’s Section 803 rule to all civilian agencies, requiring contracting officers to attempt to get at least three bids on task orders over $100,000. It requires contracting officers to draft a statement of work for any task order over $5 million and permits protests on orders above the $5 million threshold. The House also passed the Small Business Contracting Program Improvements Act, H.R. 3867, sponsored by Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez, D-NY. It would increase the limit on sole-source contracts for 8(a), HUBZone and service-disabled veteran-owned firms to $5.1 million, from the current $3 million, and $5.5 million for manufacturing, up from $5 million. The bill also gives new preferences to SDV companies, moving them to the front of the line for set-asides and making it easier to award sole-source contracts to those firms. The Senate Small Business Committee approved similar measures for SDV companies as part of the Small Business Contracting Revitalization Act, S. 2300. It would also authorize set-asides on GSA schedules and other multiple award contracts. The bill, sponsored by Small Business Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-MA, is awaiting action by the full Senate. If it passes, it would go to a conference to resolve differences with the House bill.