<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><BillSummaries>
<item congress="116" measure-type="s" measure-number="673" measure-id="id116s673" originChamber="SENATE" orig-publish-date="2019-03-06" update-date="2019-11-04">
<title>Expanding Contracting Opportunities for Small Businesses Act of 2019</title>
<summary summary-id="id116s673v00" currentChamber="SENATE" update-date="2019-11-04">
<action-date>2019-03-06</action-date>
<action-desc>Introduced in Senate</action-desc>
<summary-text><![CDATA[<p><b>Expanding Contracting Opportunities for Small Businesses Act of 2019</b></p> <p>This bill modifies provisions regarding the inclusion of option years in the award price for certain sole source contracts (i.e., contracts awarded without a competitive process) by requiring the base and each of the option years of the award, if any, to be of similar value. Under current law, option years in the award price for such contracts limit their dollar award threshold.</p> <p>Specifically, the bill revises requirements for the award of these contracts to (1) qualified Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) small businesses, (2) small businesses owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans, (3) economically disadvantaged small businesses owned and controlled by women, (4) small businesses owned and controlled by women in substantially underrepresented industries, and (5) qualified socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses.</p> <p>The Government Accountability Office must evaluate the policies and practices used by the Small Business Administration and other federal agencies to ensure that contracting officers are properly classifying sole source contracts under procurement programs for businesses owned by women and disabled veterans in the Federal Procurement Data System.</p>]]></summary-text>
</summary>
</item>
<dublinCore xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<dc:format>text/xml</dc:format>
<dc:language>EN</dc:language>
<dc:rights>Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.</dc:rights>
<dc:contributor>Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress</dc:contributor>
<dc:description>This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.</dc:description>
</dublinCore>
</BillSummaries>
