The Defense Department’s Subcontracting Plan Test Program, which exempts large primes from some subcontract reporting rules, has been extended for an additional three years, despite questions about whether the program limits subcontracting opportunities for small businesses.

The 2012 Defense Authorization Act reauthorizes the program, which was created as a pilot in 1990. Several members of Congress have raised questions about its effectiveness.

Under the Test Program, 14 of the largest prime contractors are exempt from filing subcontracting reports on each of their contracts. Instead, they create subcontracting plans on a companywide, division-wide or plant-wide basis.

The program’s stated purpose is to increase subcontracting opportunities for small firms. But the American Small Business League charges it allows major primes “to dodge the Federal Acquisition Regulation ‘liquidated damages’ clause, which requires any government contractor that fails to meet its small business-subcontracting goal to pay damages to the federal government in the amount of the deficiency.”

In 2010 five Democratic members of Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to assess the program’s results. “After 20 years the test program has never been evaluated to determine if the goals of the program have been met,” they said. “Federal contracting data calls into question whether the 14 large contractors who are participants…are actually meeting their small business subcontracting goals.”

The letter was signed by Reps. Yvette Clark of New York, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, Carolyn Maloney of New York, Lynn Woolsey of California and Chellie Pingree of Maine.