Senate bill aiding small businesses in federal subcontracting introduced

News - Published Aug 05, 2024

United States Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has introduced a bill in the Senate known as the Ensuring Efficiency and Fairness in Federal Subcontracting Act, which would implement a number of measures aimed at ensuring a level playing field for small businesses competing for federal subcontracting dollars. The bill takes a "three-pronged approach" (according to a one-page summary released by the Senator's office) to do so.

The first approach consists ensuring greater access to information for subcontractors, as well as providing them with more support, by, among other things: allowing subcontractors to request updates from the prime on the status of a government contract; requiring studies on new ways in which compliance with subcontracting plans can be enforced; and improving monitoring of small business utilization by large primes.

The second approach consists of directing the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study how the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) might be made to better incorporate the behavior of primes towards small businesses in assigning the scores it hands out to primes (which might then allow for higher weighting of a prime that meets small business utilization goals, for example).

The third approach includes various means of raising awareness of subcontract opportunities among small businesses, including requiring government agencies to perform more outreach (such as online, through meetings, etc), and also requires the General Service Administration (GSA) to improve and modernize its Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, to ensure it is capturing the best available data.

"This bill will help to ensure that small businesses - especially women, minority, and veteran-owned businesses - can compete for federal contract opportunities on a level playing field," said Senator Casey in a statement.

Read the press release from Senator Casey's office at https://www.casey.senate.gov/news/releases/casey-introduces-bill-to-help-small-businesses-better-compete-for-federal-contracts.

Find the bill at https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4750.

Read a one-page summary of the Bill from Senator Casey's office at https://www.casey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ensuring_efficiency_and_fairness_for_federal_subcontractors_act.pdf.