The House will consider legislation next week that could impact the way defense contracts are awarded.
In the wee hours of the morning on Thursday the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) passed an amendment to the fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill that requires that cost be given at least equal importance to technical and other criteria in source selection for defense contracts.
The legislative text was crafted by Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), who kept a close eye on defense-contracting matters when he led a special HASC Defense Acquisition Reform Panel. Lawmakers including Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) have tried unsuccessfully in the past to pass such legislation regarding cost considerations in contract decisions.
Andrews’ amendment was included in an “en bloc” package of proposals and did not garner much attention.
It would amend Pentagon acquisition law to make cost equal to other evaluation factors in source selections. It would allow defense agency heads to waive that requirement, but require the defense secretary to disclose each year all such waivers that were issued.
Andrews’ measure is one of the few acquisition-reform amendments offered during the HASC’s lengthy markup session of the defense authorization bill, which started Wednesday morning and ran into Thursday.
The House is slated to take up the legislation next week. The measure authorizes a $552.1 billion base defense budget and $85.8 billion in war funding. It does not reflect “sequestration,” the $500 billion in decade-long defense budget cuts that started in March, to the chagrin of many HASC members.
During the markup they rejected an amendment to keep the Pentagon from spending FY ’14 funding on buying new F-35s until the defense secretary certifies all testing on the aircraft’s increment 2B mission-systems software is complete and other issues are addressed. They passed varied amendments related to other weapons programs, including those that increase the cost cap for the Ford-class aircraft carrier, restrict funding for Stryker vehicles, and block funding for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). Other bill or report changes approved during the markup would require the Navy to discuss strategies to address shipbuilding shortfalls, increase oversight of the Littoral Combat Ship program, and require the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to actually construct a third missile-defense site in the United States that is operational in FY ’18.