Date: 2007-05-09
Speaker: LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. I would like tq thank my friend from- California for the time. and I yteld myself such time as I may consume. Small business is the- engine that drives our economic strength. The almost 26 million small businesses in the United States employ over half of all private sector workers and pay approximately 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll. Over the last decade. small businesses have generated 60 to 80 percent of new jobs each year. Congress. for many decades. has acknowledged the important role small businesses play in the Federal procurement process. That is evidenced in the Small Business Act of 1953 which states: "It is the declared policy of the Congress that the government should aid. counsel. assist and protect the interests of small business concerns in order to preserve free competitive enterprise and to ensure that a fair proporbion of the total purthases and contracts or subcontracts for property and services for the government be placed with small business enterprises." In 2006. the Federal Government spent over $417 billion on goods and services in 8.3 million separate contracts. Small businesses won a little over 21 percent of those contracts. H.R. 1873. the Small Business Fairness in Contracting Act. seeks to assist small businesses participation in the Federal procurement process. Among its provisions. it expands and clarifies the definition of.contract bundling to try to ensure that small businesses can fairly compete for Federal contracts. Contract bundling combines two or more contracts into a single larger package. Bundling can put small businesses at a disadvantage in the procurement process because the bid price usually goes beyond what small businesses can afford. This legislation. the underlying legislation. sets a target of 25 percent for the overall number of Federal contracts awarded to small businesses and a target of 8 percent for contracts awarded to minority- and womenowned businesses. The bill also provides a mechanism for the SBA to work with Congress when it believes that the Federal contract was improperly bundled. Mr. Speaker. yesterday the majority on the Rules Committee reported out yet another restrictive rule. going back once again on the promise for a more open and fair legislative process. What makes this rule most unfortunate is that it does not include even one Republican amendment. So I think the question is begged. how can the majority claim to be fostering an open legislative process when it totally shuts out the minority? During testimony at the Rules Committee. Small Business Ranking Member CHABOT explained that the Government Oversight Committee subsequently made several major changes to the bill that would harm small businesses. He proposed several amendments to strike the harmful provisions and restore those in the original bill that came out of the Small Business Committee. Now these amendmentswere even supported by the Small Business Committee chairwoman. Ms. VELkZQUEZ. but the majority in the Rules Committee ignored both Committee Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ and Raitking Member CHABOT and did not make the amendments in order. That was totally uncalled for. and Mr. Speaker. this rule should be defeated. Mr. Speaker. I reserve.