House OKs limit on no-bid federal contracts

WASHINGTON – 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. Democratic Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine’s 2nd District voted for the bill. Democratic Rep. Tom Allen of the 1st District did not vote but expressed strong support for the measure.

“The days of Halliburton’s taxpayer-funded war profiteering are over,” Allen said in a prepared statement. “This legislation establishes common sense rules to restrict no-bid and cost-plus contracts and assure that Congress and the American people see the details of all contracts and receive an honest accounting for the disbursement of public funds.”

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.”