The American Small Business League (ASBL) has accused a congressman of introducing a new bill which will allow some of his largest campaign contributors to land "billions of dollars" in federal contracts that should be reserved for small businesses.

The accusation is made against Alabama congressman Parker Griffith, who proposed the bill on September 14, 2009: "Boeing and Northrop Grumman are two of Congressman Griffith's largest campaign contributors. If H.R. 3558 becomes law, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and hundreds of Fortune 1000 firms will be able to hold on to billions of dollars in federal contracts earmarked for middle class firms," the ASBL claimed.

The small business lobby organisaiton claims that information from the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG) indicates the Obama administration counted billions of dollars in contracts to many of the largest firms in the world towards the government's 23 per cent small business contracting goal. ASBL also asserts that, during fiscal year (FY) 2008, the Obama administration included over $775m in awards to Textron in the government's small business data. Textron is a Fortune 500 firm with 43,000 employees and annual revenue of over $14bn.

"The American Small Business League estimates that legitimate small businesses are losing over $100bn a year in federal small business contracts as a result of the abuses. "The ASBL has won a series of lawsuits against several federal agencies, which have forced the release of thousands of pages of data indicating that corporate giants in the U.S. and abroad have received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts for over 10 years," the organisaiton stated:
"The Small Business Administration Office of Inspector (SBA OIG) condemned the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants in Report 5-15, referring to the abuses as, 'One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today.'"

Source:  http://www.procurementleaders.com/news/latestnews/267-law-freeze-federal-contracts/