Interest groups prepare last-ditch battle over contracting measures

Even as the Senate weighs a series of federal acquisition-related measures offered as amendments to the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill, congressional aides and industry lobbyists are deferring their fights to the conference with the House over a final version.

"Our focus is on trying to influence the conference," said Trey Hodgkins, vice president of federal programs at the Information Technology Association of America, one of 11 trade organizations collaborating to track procurement legislation in both chambers.

With little prospect that various stand-alone contracting reform bills passed by the House and Senate will become law this year, Democratic members are pushing to enact many of them by loading these measures onto the high-priority defense policy bill.

Amid scores of other amendments and with little debate time, that means key decisions on the Senate contracting amendments, and chances to influence them, will occur in conference, aides and lobbyists said.

"If the Senate had followed a normal process, we would have had a chance to review these ... communicate with the authors and discuss the impacts before it got to the floor," said Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president for the Professional Services Council, which represents federal contractors. "Now because of the compressed period of time ... we just have to assume the bill will get through and look to the next phase."

The Senate is expected Wednesday to approve an amendment offered by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, that resembles a wide-ranging Lieberman-Collins bill the Senate passed last year.

Through such steps as mandates that agencies improve recruitment of federal acquisition workers and limit the length of noncompetitive contracts awarded in emergencies, the bill aims to increase oversight and competition in federal procurement.

In May, the House approved an amendment to its defense authorization bill that incorporates several contracting bills, including much of an ambitious reform bill pushed through the House last year by Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. It includes measures in the Collins-Lieberman amendment and provisions such as a requirement that agencies create plans to limit awards of sole-source contracts.

Aides said staff-level talks aimed at reconciling the Waxman and Lieberman-Collins amendments have been under way for weeks.

Negotiations to reconcile separate House and Senate contracting reform bills backed respectively by Waxman and Collins have failed so far, and some observers said Democrats might be unwilling to allow passage of a Collins-backed measure because of her battle against Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, in her bid for re-election.

Lobbyists representing government contractors support some provisions in the Collins-Lieberman amendment and hope to weaken or eliminate other provisions they oppose.

Contractor trade groups strongly object to other proposed amendments to the Senate defense authorization bill, such as an amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would require defense contractors to certify that all their employees who previously worked for the Defense Department are complying with revolving door restrictions.

An amendment offered by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to increase restrictions on contractors previously cited for legal violations is also opposed by contractor groups. Chvotkin said the amendment would amount to a "blacklist."