House Republican leaders delayed a vote on a bill allowing workers to take compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay.

Facing heavy lobbying against the bill by labor unions, the leadership pulled it from the House calendar before a scheduled vote June 5, but said they might try again later.

The General Services Administration announced plans for a pilot program to begin publishing the text of federal contracts on the Internet.

Ralph Nader and several public interest groups had urged the publication of contracts to increase transparency in government operations. They won the support of Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels Jr.

GSA asked for comments on how to protect proprietary information and national security data.

The notice, FR Doc. 03-14341 in the June 6 Federal Register, is open for public comment until Aug. 5.

OMB has ordered a freeze on new or renewed software licenses.

In a memorandum released June 2, Director Mitch Daniels Jr. said GSA will begin negotiating governmentwide enterprise licenses under a program called SmartBuy. Daniels said the current practice of each agency buying its own license “is wasteful and ineffective.”

Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), ranking minority member of the House Small Business Committee, is asking the General Accounting Office to investigate why a significant number of small businesses throughout the country did not receive SBA disaster loans following the terrorist attacks of September 11.

“In some areas more than half of the applications received for SBA disaster loans were declined or withdrawn,” she said in a statement. The loan program has now expired.

The Senate voted to go ahead with a scheduled round of military base closings in 2005, but the House voted to limit the number of bases that can be shut down.

The conflicting provisions in the 2004 Defense Authorization bill will be sorted out in a conference committee.

“We are spending billions of dollars year after year maintaining infrastructure that we simply do not need,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, said in Senate debate June 4. “It is a waste of public resources to hold onto this infrastructure, and it is an impediment to our efforts to protect our national security.”

The Pentagon estimates it has as much as 25% excess capacity in its domestic bases.

The House Small Business Committee unanimously approved legislation to strengthen SBA’s Office of Advocacy so it can more effectively and independently protect small businesses from unnecessary federal regulations.

The bill, H.R. 1772, would give Advocacy a separate line item in the agency budget, so that the administrator could not shift the funds to other uses. The legislation is sponsored by Reps. Todd Akin (R-MO) and Ed Schrock (R-VA).

The Small Business Administration begins commemorating its 50th anniversary Aug. 1 at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum in Abilene, KS, where President Eisenhower signed the Small Business Act in 1953.

The anniversary will be celebrated in Washington during the National Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo, Sept. 17-19. The conference will honor the National Small Business Person of the Year and will also include matchmaking sessions and seminars.

Information is available at www.sba.gov.