April 23, 2009
Subcommittee Seeks to Increase Contracts to Veteran-owned Businesses
For more information, contact: Brian Lawrence, (202) 225-3527
Washington, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member John Boozman made the following statement during a Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity hearing to identify ways to improve the process by which the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) awards contracts to veteran-owned businesses.
“During the 109th Congress, we passed important small business legislation to enable VA contracting officials to increase the number of contracts awarded to veteran and disabled veteran-owned small businesses.
To its credit, VA has made a significant effort to do so. Last year, almost fifteen percent of VA procurement contracts went to veteran-owned small businesses. Such contracts represented a combined total of about $2.1 billion, including $1.66 billion to disabled vet small businesses. I applaud VA for its accomplishment and for setting the standard for the rest of the federal government.
While VA has done an excellent job in exceeding the veteran-owned small business contracting goal, I am concerned about implementation of the database to verify whether a business is veteran-owned. More than two years have passed since this requirement became law, and thus far only 974 of the 18,368 companies in the database have been verified. At this rate, it will take about twenty more years to fulfill the requirement. VA’s foot-dragging on this issue is preventing hard-working and qualified veteran-owned companies from competing for contracts.
If the VA has encountered impediments to implementing this provision of law, this Subcommittee needs to hear about them so we can provide a solution. Otherwise, I expect to see reasonable progress toward implementation of the legislation we passed. And in the case of the database, VA has dropped the ball.
For more news from House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Republicans, please go to:
http://republicans.veterans.house.gov/
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