House Passes Disabled Vets Set-Aside The House has approved a set-aside contracting program for disabled veterans. The bill, H.R. 1460, passed unanimously June 24. A companion bill is pending in the Senate. It authorizes both sole source and set-aside contracts for businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. Sole source contracts would be limited to $5 million for manufacturing and $3 million for all other categories, the same ceilings as for 8(a) companies. Before the vote, Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) had objected that the bill would hurt minority- and woman-owned businesses by carving the federal procurement pie into smaller pieces. (SAA, 6/13) Congress in 1999 set a goal of awarding 3% of federal contract dollars to firms owned by service-disabled veterans, but in fiscal 2002 those firms received only 0.13% of the dollars, according to the Federal Procurement Data Center. In a turnabout from its usual free-market policies, the Bush administration backed the bill. Angela Styles, administrator of Federal Procurement Policy, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee April 30: “The federal government has done an abysmal job of providing federal contracting opportunities for our veterans.”