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Although their goals remain relatively similar, House and Senate lawmakers appear to be following noticeably different paths toward implementing a series of much debated contracting reform bills.

Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, introduced a wide-ranging set of acquisition provisions that covers everything from prohibiting the use of lead systems integrators to providing greater protection for private sector whistleblowers.

The 52-page Clean Contracting Amendment, included as part of the House's fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill, includes provisions that have passed the House but failed to gain traction in the Senate or those that were previously implemented by the Defense Department and would now be expanded governmentwide.

While the House appears to be swinging for the fences, the Senate's version of the defense authorization bill takes a more modest approach to contracting reform.

Peter Levine, general counsel for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Defense Department still was adjusting to the multitude of complex acquisition regulation changes that Congress passed in the fiscal 2008 bill.

"We're trying to be less aggressive this year," Levine said on Wednesday at a conference sponsored by the Coalition for Government Procurement, a contractor trade group.

For example, the Senate bill includes a scaled-down, government-only version of a contractor misconduct database that would that track completed criminal, civil or administrative proceedings against federal contractors. Waxman's amendment, however, mirrors a bill that passed the House in April that opens the contractor database to the general public.

Reaching common ground between the two bills could be dicey.

Mark Stephenson, a staffer on the oversight committee, said at the conference that House Democrats have compromised already by limiting the database to only completed proceedings. He declined to comment on any further compromises.

Senate staffers have raised administrative concerns about making sure documents that are not legally available to the public are excluded from the database. But Stephenson suggested that Freedom of Information Act officials at agencies are equipped to handle the process.

The House and Senate also disagree about the need to address sole-source contracting.

Stephenson cited House committee data showing that contracts awarded without full and open competition had risen from $67.5 billion in 2000 to nearly $207 billion in 2006. The Clean Contracting Amendment requires all federal agencies to develop and implement a plan to minimize the use of sole-source contracts.

Senate lawmakers say those figures are grossly overstated.

Levine said statistics from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the Pentagon suggest that sole-source contracting has remained relatively stable in recent years. The discrepancy, he said, is that House officials count each task order granted to a single vendor on a multiple award contract, while the government does not.

The House and Senate appear far apart on a handful of legislative tactics, but they generally agree about the source of many contracting-related problems and how to address them.

The two legislative aides concurred on the need to beef up the acquisition workforce development fund, provide greater oversight of interagency contracts and to address personal and organizational conflicts of interest that arise when contractors work side-by-side with federal employees.

"On virtually every subject, we share the same objective," Levine said.

COMMENTS

• On October 10, 2002 a man was almost electrocuted while working on postal equipment. This equipment was obsolete but was kept in service to hide,store and delay the mail. This was done to inflate mail volume figures. It seems that the Oversight Committee missed the relationship that has developed between the Postal Service and postal equipment manufaturers. During the summer of 2006 Postmaster General Potter came to Oakland to insure that the overhead conveyor system that was soppose to be removed in 1989 after the earthquake,would be gone by the time the new mail processing machines arrived.The conveyor system was used to inflate mail volume numbers to justify the purchase of mail processing equipment which is scrapped or sold before the end of it's useful life.The more mail that is processed,the higher postal rates go. Mass mailers get to write off the cost of producing junk mail and they are sold the used processing equipment before it gets too old.When this equipment is not sold to the mass mailers it is sold to other countries or sold(instead of given)to the scrap man.Because of the "Hatch Act Amendments",the Senate and the Congress can say that thier hands are clean.The American public is being hoodwinked.The "Forever Stamp" should be free.The postal service could and should give everyone a book of "Forever Stamps" free each month.The conveyor systems in every mail processing and distribution center in the country were used the same way. Roger Clark,now a supervisor in Oakland worked on many of these systems.The one in Oakland was the last in the country to be removed from service. allen sanford Posted June 3, 2008 9:53 AM
• I want to focus on one area of Mr. Waxman's Amendment--cost reimbursement contracts. As usual, when someone attempts to address the problem of inappropriateness of cost reimbursement contracts they fail to zero in on the one facet that makes cost plus such a bad deal for the taxpayers. Namely, cost growth and/or cost overruns. Mr. Waxman should have included a requirement for agencies with contracts exceeding $10,000,000 (that is the figure used in the proposed legislation) to report the original dollar estimate, the actual contract spending to date broken down by year, and provide detailed explanations for the increases. Only then will the empirical data exist to establish that cost reimbursement contracts, especially for commercial services, are a gross waste of resources. The Army has attempted several times to capture this data only to be stopped by contractor associations who lobbied that this would cause them undue hardship. There is a big change coming in our country primarily due to the excesses of the current administration. We will get the data eventually. Count on it. KO Posted June 2, 2008 12:57 PM
• "We're from Washington and we're here to help." Please don't. You will only end up adding to the burden of an already overstressed workforce, reeling from the residual effects of reductions in the 90s, actual and impending retirements, unseasoned newcomers, increased outsourcing of governmental functions, dysfunctional performance evaluation schemes (e.g., performance based acquisition and NSPS), knee-jerk political nonsense (e.g., the AF tanker acquisition) - not to mention that "we don't get no respect". Here's a novel concept: instead of posturing and pontificating on The Hill, seek and obtain insight and input from the acquisition workforce. They actually know something about acquisition. Contract Specialist Posted May 30, 2008 12:30 PM