Congress Still Works Same Ol’ Contracting Puzzle
Mar 29th, 2010 | By dawnriversbaker | Category: RegulationsLast week, the House Committee on Small Business dusted off one of its perpetual favorites among small business issues when Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez convened a hearing on small businesses in the federal procurement marketplace. As the Chairwoman pointed out in her opening statement, small business owners are saying that their biggest challenge isn’t access to capital or even burdensome regulations, both of which have gotten some attention lately. Their biggest challenge is much more fundamental: not enough customers. Under the circumstances, the most direct way for the government to stimulate economic recovery would be to fill that void by buying from them. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been working out that way, for reasons that everybody in the room had heard before.
Contract bundling, prime contractors who abuse small business subcontractors in largely successful attempts to game the system, issues of parity (or lack thereof) among the various demographic preference programs, poorly trained procurement center personnel — the list is very familiar. But one witness was able to point out to the panel that the system was built for large firms and is not small business friendly. This is not to say those other problems shouldn’t be addressed. But the best federal procurement solution for the overall economy would be to broaden the pool of small firms from which the federal government buys and that means making the market more welcoming to microbusinesses.
