Transparency and Predictability in Small Business Opportunities Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ALFORD. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to thank Chairman Williams and Majority Leader Scalise for helping get H.R. 8014, the Transparency and Predictability in Small Business Opportunities Act, to this very House floor.

I am honored to serve on the Small Business Committee, especially having been a small business owner myself. The committee exists in Congress to champion Main Street and to make sure that the small businesses that employ about half of all Americans can continue to thrive.

Madam Speaker, our role is to help lower the barriers to creating small businesses and to support small businesses that already exist. It is quite simple, and I think this bill helps with that.

Major tools to help existing small businesses are government contracts specifically set aside for small businesses.

However, Federal agencies cancel contract solicitations often with no warning and no reason, leaving the small businesses that spent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and a lot of time preparing these bids out in the cold. They have no idea why their deal did not go through.

This bill, the Transparency and Predictability in Small Business Opportunities Act, will help address the problem.

This legislation would require agencies to provide to the SBA a justification for canceled contract solicitations. Additionally, this would require the agency canceling the contract solicitation to disclose available information about plans to reissue similar solicitations.

Finally, Madam Speaker, if the agency does not plan on reissuing solicitations, the agency's director of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization must assist the small business in identifying similar contracting opportunities.

I am proud to co-lead this legislation, along with Mr. Mfume of Maryland, and urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and supporting Main Street America.

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