[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 26 (Wednesday, March 3, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H759-H762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PERMITTING MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARDS TO NONPROFIT 
                             ORGANIZATIONS

  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill 
(H.R. 3389) to amend the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 
1980 to permit the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards to be made 
to nonprofit organizations.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 3389

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. AMENDMENT.

       Section 17(c)(1) of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology 
     Innovation Act of 1980 (15 U.S.C. 3711a(c)(1)) is amended by 
     adding at the end the following:
       ``(F) Nonprofit organizations.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Miller) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart).


                             General Leave

  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material on H.R. 3389.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Pennsylvania?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was 
established by Congress and signed into law in August of 1987. The 
first awards were presented in 1988.
  This award was established because many industry and government 
leaders saw that a renewed emphasis was a necessity for doing business 
in an expanding, competitive world market. But many American businesses 
either did not believe quality mattered for them or did not know where 
to begin. The Baldrige Award was envisioned as a standard of excellence 
that would help United States organizations achieve world class 
quality.
  Mr. Speaker, the award is named after Malcolm Baldrige, who was 
Secretary of Commerce to President Ronald Reagan from 1981 until his 
tragic death in July of 1987. Malcolm Baldrige thought the keys to this 
country's prosperity and long-term strength was quality management. He 
was involved with the creation of the act and his name was added after 
his death.
  The Baldrige Award is given by the President of the United States to 
businesses, manufacturing and service businesses, both small and large, 
and to education and health care organizations. Applicants prepare 
detailed assessments of their management systems. The criteria are 
built upon a set of 11 interrelated core values and concepts. The seven 
criteria categories provide a system essential to achieving performance 
excellence, leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, 
information and analysis, human resource focus, process management and 
business results.
  Baldrige applicants receive detailed written feedback about their 
strengths and opportunities for improvement from a team of independent 
Baldrige examiners. A panel of judges determines which organizations 
will be finalists for the award and those organizations receive site 
visits to verify and clarify their applications.
  Two such businesses in my district have been recipients of the 
Malcolm Baldrige Award. This year's awardee, the 2003 manufacturing 
recipient, was Medrad, Inc., of Indianola, Pennsylvania. They are a 
leading provider of medical devices that enhance medical imaging 
procedures of the human body and also of injector systems.
  The first manufacturing recipient in 1988 was also in my district, 
Westinghouse Electric Corporation's Commercial Nuclear Fuel Division.

[[Page H760]]

  Our amendment today will make one simple change to the Malcolm 
Baldrige Awards. It will adds the words ``nonprofit organization'' to 
those who are eligible to receive the award. Currently only 
manufacturers, service businesses, small businesses, education 
organizations and health care organizations are eligible for the 
Baldrige Award. Baldrige-based State award programs, however, have 
added additional categories that include nonprofits and government 
agencies.
  However, there are three types of nonprofit organizations that are 
not eligible to apply for the Baldrige Award. These organizations 
account for a significant portion of the U.S. economy, and cannot 
benefit from the assessment and feedback process of the Baldrige Award. 
They are public agencies of the Federal, State and local government; 
independent, private not-for-profit organizations; for example, human 
service organizations, religious organizations, cultural or 
professional organizations; and also quasi-public organizations created 
by legislative authority are also not eligible; for example, public 
utilities, mutual insurance companies or credit unions.
  In 1999, it was recognized that the Baldrige Award's performance 
standards can help stimulate improvement efforts in other sectors vital 
to the U.S. economy and the areas of education and health care were 
added to that criteria. Since then, a total of 66 applications have 
been submitted in the education category and 61 in the health care 
category, obviously giving these organizations an opportunity to 
improve their systems.
  As it has for current eligible U.S. businesses, the Baldrige Award 
program can help nonprofit organizations improve their performance and 
also to foster communications, sharing of ``best practices'' and 
partnerships among schools, health care organizations and businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time 
as I may consume.
  (Mr. MILLER of North Carolina asked and was given permission to 
revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of 
H.R. 3389. Since 1987, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards 
have recognized excellence for quality in management. The Baldrige 
Awards quickly became America's highest honor for excellence and 
performance, and the benefits of the award exceeded any expectation.
  To recognize excellence, the Department of Commerce first had to 
decide what excellence in management was and then how to achieve it. 
That required that businesses see their performance through the eyes of 
their customers and their employees. The criteria for excellence that 
developed as a result have transformed American business and the 
businesses that have competed for the awards, including the businesses 
that have not won the award, have achieved higher productivity, greater 
customer satisfaction, better employee relations, increased market 
share and improved profitability. The awards have made quality a 
national priority and have disseminated nationally the best practices 
for achieving it.
  A recent study of the Baldrige Awards by Professor Albert Link of the 
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, one of my district's 
outstanding academic institutions, and by Professor John Scott of 
Dartmouth College, a college in New England, estimated the benefits of 
the award and the competition for the award at $24.65 billion. That is 
an astounding sum.
  The Baldrige Awards now have five categories: Manufacturing, service, 
small business, and, since 1999, health care and education. But many 
other organizations cannot participate: Not-for-profit, service 
organizations, government agencies at the Federal, State and local 
level, independent sector organizations, such as human services, 
religious, cultural or trade and professional organizations, and 
private quasi-public organizations created by legislative authority, 
such as public utilities, cooperatives, mutual insurance companies and 
credit unions.
  These organizations represent a significant part of the American 
economy, but they are now unable to benefit from the assessment and the 
feedback that are a vital part of the Baldrige Awards and the award 
process.
  Let me say a special word about government agencies. The gentlewoman 
from Pennsylvania and I may disagree about what government should do, 
but there should be no disagreement about how government should do it. 
There should be no disagreement how government should be managed. 
Government agencies should be managed as well as the best managed 
private businesses. Managers in government must respect the people they 
serve and they must respect the taxpayers who pay for what they do. 
Managers in government should be consumed with achieving excellence in 
performance and in achieving efficiency.
  I fervently hope that government agencies will focus on what 
constitutes excellence and how to achieve it, and that we will save 
billions as a result, just as private businesses have saved billions, 
as a result of competing for the Baldrige Awards.
  In my district in North Carolina, there are many important 
organizations that are left out of the Baldrige experience. Let me tell 
you about just a couple of them.
  Our State Treasurer's Office and Department of Revenue have made 
great strides in applying sound management quality practices by 
increasing accuracy and by cutting telephone hold times, freeing my 
State's citizens from voice mail jail.
  Likewise, our crime control and public safety agencies are 
demonstrating the value of a systematic quality and performance 
excellence approach grounded in Baldrige criteria.
  The North Carolina State Highway Patrol, a recipient of our State 
Quality Award, has achieved important improvements in all of its key 
performance effectiveness measures. The Commander of the Highway 
Patrol, Chief R. W. Holden, said that our State Baldrige-based award 
process allowed us to direct our self-improvement efforts to the most 
effective areas of our organization.
  The Carolina Blood Services Region of the American Red Cross is 
another State Quality Award winner that has achieved stellar results.
  These public agencies are demonstrating excellence in management 
every day. The keys to their continued improvement are the ability to 
be recognized for their good work and the ability to measure their 
performance against proven standards in order to become even better.
  These worthy organizations affect our daily lives and our 
communities' well-being, and, like so many other not-for-profit service 
organizations, they cannot benefit from the Baldrige Award process 
today.
  It is time to remedy this, and this bill proposes that the Baldrige 
Awards be opened up to allow participation by not-for-profit 
organizations, including government agencies. Support for this proposed 
expansion is widespread. The Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige Award, 
the Baldrige Board of Overseers, the Secretary of Commerce and the 
President have endorsed expansion to include not-for-profit service 
organizations.
  The Baldrige National Quality Program is a public-private 
partnership. It is managed by the National Institute for Standards and 
Technologies, NIST, an agency of the Commerce Department, and is 
supported by the private sector Baldrige Foundation. These 
organizations raise funds to support Baldrige's many activities so that 
the Federal investment in this program is leveraged many times over, 
not only by this private sector funding, but also by the efforts of 
hundreds of largely private sector volunteers and voluntary sector 
organizations, such as the American Red Cross.
  I would be very proud to tell the folks in North Carolina, in the 
North Carolina Treasurer's Office, in the State Patrol and in the Blood 
Bank, that they too will be eligible to receive the recognition that 
goes with the Baldrige Awards, and to share their best practices with 
other organizations across the country.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I also would like to commend the gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Miller) for his sponsorship of the legislation.

[[Page H761]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Ehlers).

                              {time}  1045

  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of H.R. 3389, which 
amends the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards to include a 
category for nonprofit organizations. On the Committee on Science I 
serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment, Technology and 
Standards, with jurisdiction over the National Institute of Standards 
Technology, which administers the Baldrige Awards program. In that role 
I am most pleased to support this bill.
  When the Baldrige award was first announced many years ago, my first 
thought was, well, what is another award? But this has turned out to be 
a very outstanding action on the part of the Congress and by the 
Department of Commerce. It has become one of the most important awards 
in America. It is highly sought after, and it is a tremendous honor to 
receive the Baldrige Award.
  However, the Baldrige Award program is much more than an honor. The 
criteria of the award are used by companies and organizations 
nationwide to evaluate their own performance. Also, many State quality 
awards programs use a national Baldrige criteria. For example, in my 
district last year, the Michigan Quality Council using Baldrige 
criteria for evaluation recognized the Grand Rapids Community College 
for its vision and service to the community.
  I am pleased to support this change to the Malcolm Baldrige National 
Quality Award. Including nonprofit organizations will open the 
competition to groups that have expressed strong support for the 
opportunity to be recognized for their efforts at the national level. 
Many States already include nonprofits as a category, and including 
them in the national program will help strengthen the Baldrige quality 
criteria.
  I thank the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) and the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller) for their work in bringing 
this bill to the floor today, and I urge all of my colleagues to 
support it.
  Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time 
as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to acknowledge the gentlewoman from 
Pennsylvania's (Ms. Hart) work and thank her for working so well on 
this and for her leadership on this issue. After hearing the strongly 
partisan 1-minutes this morning, I am very glad we found some common 
ground between the parties.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Gordon).
  Mr. GORDON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Beginning in 1987, the Baldrige Award process has defined what it 
means to be a world-class manufacturing or service company, has honored 
companies that attained that status, and has helped other companies 
understand the most important steps they must take if they are to 
improve their quality.
  The financial results, customer and supplier relations, and the labor 
relations of winning companies have been quite impressive.
  In the late 1990s, Congress extended the Baldrige Award categories to 
include education and health care fields. I am very proud that 
Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation located in Nashville, 
Tennessee, won in the service category. I also want to congratulate 
Stoner Inc., located in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, for winning the 
small business category. This is a small manufacturer of more than 300 
specialized cleaners, lubricants, and coatings. It has 45 full-time and 
five part-time employees. Stoner proves that small manufacturers can 
successfully compete in the face of world competition.
  This year's Baldrige Award also shows the importance of the 
Department of Commerce MEP program. Stoner used services of the Mid-
Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership in this modernization 
effort. I mention this because up until the FY 2005 request, the 
administration has always proposed eliminating the MEP program. This 
year the administration has requested funding but at only a one-third 
level, which essentially guts this very important program. This is 
short-sighted and a wrong budget decision.
  Companies all across the organization like Stoner show that small 
manufacturers can compete in the global marketplace. They also use MEP 
services to meet the competitive challenges and to be successful.
  I want to use this example to remind my colleagues of the importance 
of MEP to our small- and medium-sized manufacturing community. I want 
to urge all Members in joining me in restoring funding for the 
Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
  I also want to congratulate the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. 
Hart) for the work she has done on this excellent legislation. And I 
want to congratulate the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller) on 
his effort to extend the Baldrige Award to the nonprofit sector 
including government. This is the last sector of our economy that is 
not currently covered by the Baldrige Award. The gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Miller) has become a leader on the Committee on Science 
on a variety of economic issues, including technology transfer and 
quality.
  I also want to thank, finally, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Boehlert) for seeing that this bill moved quickly to the floor.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I also would like to thank the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Boehlert) for his involvement and support for the Baldrige Awards, 
as I understand he was involved with the Baldrige Awards at their 
inception. I also would like to thank former ranking member of the 
Committee on Science, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall), for his 
support for this legislation and for the Baldrige Awards, and also our 
current ranking member, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), for 
his hard work and bipartisanship in working to grow the Baldrige Awards 
and give others the opportunity to participate in that wonderful 
process.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time 
as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. 
Gordon), who is now the ranking member of the Committee on Science for 
his work on this and for his support as well as his kind words just a 
few minutes ago.
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3389, and 
I want to thank Ms. Hart and Mr. Miller for bringing it before the 
Science Committee.
  I'm especially pleased to be able to support this bill because I was 
co-author of the law that created the Baldrige National Quality Award, 
and that measure has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.
  The Baldrige National Quality Program is so much more than an award. 
It is an entire philosophy that has helped--and continues to help make 
our companies and our nation more productive and competitive.
  The Baldrige Program has been described by CEOs as ``the most 
important catalyst for transforming American business,'' and the 
publication containing the Baldrige criteria has been hailed as 
``probably the single most influential document in the modern history 
of American business.''
  Opening the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award to non-profits will not 
only enable them to compete against for the coveted Quality Award, but 
it will allow non-profits to participate in the Baldrige Quality 
process. This will help all of the non-profits that compete for the 
award assess themselves scientifically, become more innovative, make 
the best use of their employees, serve their customers better, and hold 
their enterprises to a higher standard.
  Non-profits play a significant role in American society. When they 
improve, we are all better off. I'm pleased to note that my own state 
of New York has already instituted a non-profit category in its 
Governor's Award for Excellence. The Empire State Advantage, which runs 
the state-level quality program, strongly supports this bill.
  It gives me great pleasure to join with my colleagues Ms. Hart and 
Mr. Miller in opening up the competitive process to non-profits. I urge 
passage of this bill.
  Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests 
for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

[[Page H762]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shaw). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 3389.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of 
those present have voted in the affirmative.
  Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

                          ____________________