[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.
____________________