In what has become an annual ritual, both Houses of Congress passed continuing resolutions to keep the government operating into the 2004 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, because Congress has not completed action on appropriations bills for the new year.

The resolution provides funding through Oct. 31. But that may not be time enough to complete action on the remaining 10 appropriations bills. Congress has cleared only three spending bills, setting its own 2004 budget as well as those for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

NASA chose InDyne Inc. of McLean, VA, as the lead contractor to provide communication services to three programs at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Kennedy Integrated Communications Services contract, estimated at $190.7 million over five years, calls for InDyne to provide communication services to support: the Space Shuttle; Payload Carriers and Launch Services; and the International Space Station.

The contract is the first of five work packages contained in the Space Mission Communication and Data Services solicitation, which were broken out of the NASA Consolidated Space Operations contract, now held by Lockheed Martin.

InDyne’s partners are Verizon Federal Inc. of Washington and Northrop Grumman Technical Services of Herndon, VA.

In July InDyne was awarded an eight-year, $429 million operation, information and communications contract with the Air Force Space Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. It is one of the largest IT contracts ever for a small business, according to SBA.

InDyne is a graduated 8(a) firm with about 900 employees; it operates under a small business size standard allowing up to 1,500 employees.

The military commander of the Army Corps of Engineers is pushing a reorganization plan that would create eight new “regional business centers” to oversee its operations, the Washington Post reported Sept. 24.

Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers will ask Congress to stop exercising its traditional line-item review over the Corps’ construction projects. The Corps budget, $4.2 billion this year, is a favorite target of critics of pork barrel spending.

Flowers said his plan will give the Corps’ military leadership more control over its operations, the report said.

While the majority of small businesses borrow money from some source, most small firms’ reliance on credit in business operations is limited in scope, according to a study by SBA’s Office of Advocacy.

Using data from a 1998 survey by the Federal Reserve Board, the study found that 47% of small firms had no outstanding debt and another 25% had just one loan outstanding.

More than 80% of the small businesses surveyed used some kind of credit. The most frequent sources were personal and business credit cards, lines of credit and vehicle loans.

Not surprisingly, the study found that reliance on bank loans became more common as the size of the business grew. For the smallest firms, credit cards and loans from their owners were the most important sources of credit.

SBA has signed a strategic alliance memorandum with the Hispanic Business Roundtable designed to increase the participation of Hispanic-owned businesses in SBA programs.

The agency will hold forums in Hispanic communities to raise awareness of its programs. The agreement calls for the parties to cooperate on six major areas: Capital Access; Training/Management and Technical Assistance; Procurement; International Trade; Women-owned Businesses; and Veteran-owned Businesses.

There’s no shortage of American strategic goatskins, after all.

The Washington Times reports the Defense Department had planned to waive the Berry Amendment, a Buy American law, so manufacturers could buy Pakistani goatskins for use in the military’s brown leather bomber jackets. The Pentagon notice said U.S. goatskins were not available in sufficient quantity or quality.

Several members of Congress stood up for the American goatskin industry. Some of them included bomber jackets in the Buy American provisions of the pending defense authorization bill. In the face of the opposition, the Pentagon backed down on issuing the waiver.