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03/15/07
Sunshine Week 2007
House
votes to limit no-bid federal contracts, ending "Sunshine
Week"
By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted to limit no-bid federal
contracts Thursday, alleging abuses and citing huge losses
in contracts for Katrina recovery and Iraq reconstruction.
The Accountability in Contracting Act was the last of five
open government bills the House passed this week under new
Democratic leaders critical of what they say has been the
closed and secretive nature of the Bush administration.
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, passed 347-73
The White House opposed the contracting bill, as it did most
of the other bills, saying it would complicate the administration's
own efforts to make contracting more competitive.
Democrats cited figures showing that federal contracts have
nearly doubled in the Bush years, to about $400 billion a
year, and that sole-source contracts, where there is no competitive
bidding, grew from $67 billion in 2000 to $145 billion in
2005.
"This surge in contract spending has enriched private
contractors like Halliburton but it has come at a steep cost
to taxpayers through rising waste, fraud and abuse and mismanagement,"
said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Oversight
and Government Reform Committee.
Much of the criticism of no-bid contracts has been directed
at Halliburton, a giant oil services company once headed by
Vice President Dick Cheney that was given noncompetitive work
to restore Iraq's oil production.
In addition, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., said post-Katrina
contracts worth $8.75 billion have been proven wasteful and
sometimes have included fraud.
The legislation would limit the awarding of no-bid contracts
for emergencies to one year, and would require agencies that
spend more than $1 billion a year on federal contracts to
implement plans to minimize use of sole-source contracts.
It also would require agencies to reduce the number of "cost-plus"
contracts that leave the government vulnerable to wasteful
spending, and would require that contract overcharges in excess
of $10 million be disclosed to Congress.
The bill sets limits on procurement officers dealing with
their former or future employers in the private sector.
The administration said that would restrain the government's
"ability to tap the technical expertise of federal employees
who are former contractor employees." Rep. Tom Davis
of Virginia, top Republican on the Oversight Committee, also
said it was unfair to "pass onerous restrictions based
on the misdeeds of a handful of employees."
Davis succeeded in attaching to the bill a provision that
would prohibit all government agencies from awarding contracts
to institutions of higher learning that deny military recruitment
on their campuses. Under current law, the ban applies only
to contracts from the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland
Security and a few other agencies.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., former chairman of the Armed
Services Committee, denied that Republicans, when they were
in power, failed to exercise oversight over Bush administration
practices. He also defended some no-bid contracts, saying,
"When you are fighting a war you need to move quickly
... you don't give a six-month appeal to the folks who lose
competitions."
But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the contracting
bill, along with four others passed Wednesday, signified that
the "days of hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil,
are over. This Congress embraces its constitutional responsibility
to conduct real, meaningful oversight."
Two measures directly affect the president. One would require
that contributors to the presidential library make their donations
public. The other would overturn a directive by President
Bush making it easier for current and former presidents to
withhold their records from historians and the public.
Another gives the public and the media more clout in getting
sometimes-reluctant federal agencies to respond to Freedom
of Information Act requests.
The fourth expands whistle-blower protections, specifically
for national security officials, airport screeners and government
scientists who say they experience political pressure or retaliation
because of their research.
All passed with strong Republican support, but the administration
said it opposed the FOIA bill and issued veto threats on the
presidential records and whistle-blower bills.
The whistle-blower measure, it said, "could compromise
national security, is unconstitutional and is overly burdensome
and unnecessary."
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On the Net:
The contracting bill is H.R. 1362; information can be found
at http://thomas.loc.gov/
Information on the other bills _ H.R. 1309 (FOIA); H.R. 1254
(libraries); H.R. 1255 (presidential records); and H.R. 985
(whistle-blowers): http://tinyurl.com/2tx5g4
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