Expressing solidarity with the people of Egypt in their democratic aspirations as they begin a new chapter in their country's proud history.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require public disclosure of information submitted under section 847 of this act.

This amendment is about bringing more accountability and sunshine to the $379 billion average annual defense contracting business by making a revolving door database, which already exists, publicly available. It would allow the public access to important ethics information about some DOD employees who leave to go through the resolving door to jobs in the defense contracting industry, often with companies with whom they have been negotiating billions of dollars in contracts.

Current and former public servants should not be able to use their positions for private gain, and powerful defense contractors should not be able to rig the system.

But, unfortunately, this relationship is not uncommon. One way contractors gain influence in the government is to hire away civil servants and political appointees with access to inside people and information from their government positions. In some cases, highly skilled and well-connected former senior government officials enter the private sector as executives or officers or lobbyists or on the boards of directors of government contractors, a practice known as the revolving door.

It is also widely acknowledged that there are inherent conflicts of interest in the revolving door, potential ethical problems that can lead to the wasteful spending of taxpayers' dollars and worse.

For this reason, DOD currently collects ethics opinions on certain acquisition employees who go to work for contractors within 2 years of leaving DOD. This amendment would simply require this database to be publicly available online.

This amendment would not add any requirements or change the current post-employment restrictions. The law already requires DOD employees who hold a key acquisition position to obtain a written ethics opinion from a DOD ethics counselor before taking a job with a contractor in the 2 years after leaving DOD.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008 mandated that covered DOD acquisition officials, that would be certain executive schedule, Senior Executive Service, and general or flag officer positions, must obtain a post-employment ethics opinion before accepting a paid position from a DOD contractor within 2 years after they leave DOD service. It also requires that DOD contractors ensure that new hires have an ethics opinion.

The law also requires that each request for a written opinion made pursuant to this section, and each written opinion provided pursuant to such a request, shall be retained by the Department of Defense in a central database for not less than 5 years beginning on the date in which the written opinion was provided.

But these ethics opinions are not currently shared with the public. Why should this information be secret and hidden from public view?

At times the overly cozy relationships between DOD and contractors lead to cost overruns, loose ethical standards, and lack of accountability. This problem is compounded by the dramatic increase in DOD contract spending in recent years. The inability of DOD's acquisition workforce to effectively manage that dramatic growth and increasing industry consolidation have caused DOD to become too dependent on a handful of companies to provide essential goods and services.

It has become impractical or even outright impossible for DOD to bar any of these companies from contracting or impose punishment more severe than a mere slap on the wrist.

Mr. Chair, the examples of lack of accountability are endless:

BAE Systems: Last year, BAE settled an international bribery case in the U.S. and UK for $450 million and pleaded guilty to criminal charges. But it was allowed to keep doing business with the federal government and has won billions of dollars in contracts since then. Even last week's run-in with the State Department, when BAE paid $79 million after State discovered they had withheld vital info while negotiating last year's settlement, hasn't hurt it.

BP: Last year, the EPA was considering debarring BP for its many environmental and workplace safety violations, but DoD pressured them to back off because BP supplies 80 percent of the fuel to U.S. forces.

KBR: Still a key DoD supplier despite a long history of misconduct, including incidents that put the lives of soldiers and employees at risk.

Charles Tiefer of the Commission on Wartime Contracting nicknamed five large companies that do business with DoD (KBR, Agility, Louis Berger Group, Tamimi, First Kuwaiti) the ``Flagrant Five'' for continuing to receive contracts despite claims of fraud, misconduct and poor performance.

At a time when the public is questioning the ethics and integrity of the federal government and its spending of taxpayer dollars, the very least we can do is to shine a little light on the revolving door between the government and large private contractors.

This amendment would do just that.

It would direct DoD to make the information they already collect publicly available online to increase accountability and improve the ethics in relationships between DoD acquisitions and defense contractors. Groups like the nonpartisan Project On Government Oversight have urged DoD to make the database public, to no avail. DoD is not prohibited from putting the information online, but clearly has resisted doing so.

There is no public interest in keeping this information secret or hidden from view. The only interest served by keeping this ethics information in the shadows are those of current and former public servants use their positions for private gain means powerful private corporations can rig the system in their favor. This costs taxpayers, limits or eliminates competition from businesses that may be the best for the job, and results in flawed policies and bad procurement decisions. It also harms the public trust.

Public access to the revolving door database represents the kind of open government that the public wants and deserves, especially at this time of ever-escalating spending of taxpayer dollars by the Pentagon. It will improve the integrity of the federal contracting system, shine light on the revolving door between the Pentagon and the defense industry, and act as a deterrent to overly-cozy relationship that could lead to wasted taxpayer dollars.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

First of all, I want to thank the gentleman for bringing this amendment. I know he is sincere in talking about deficit reduction, and I certainly appreciate that. All of us on this side are equally sincere. In fact, I'm one of only 17 Members of this body who voted against every single one of the bailouts and stimulus bills because we realized what it was doing to the deficit in this country.

Secondly, I share the gentleman's concern when he talks about some of DOD's decisions to change from private contractors to civilians because some of those decisions haven't been based on business models. But just because they have not all been correct doesn't mean they have all been wrong. And the problem with this approach is that it's exactly the wrong approach because it will be a disincentive to the Department of Defense to try to reach these efficiencies.

The reason that DOD has an incentive to try to make these efficiencies is so that they can reprioritize and use these dollars for programs that are absolutely vital and important for the national defense of the country. To say that every time they make those savings we are going to take off of the top line of the Department of Defense will be a disincentive for the Department of Defense to make those savings.

And here are the effects that we have. If we don't have civilians doing these jobs, we have had testimony coming before our committee from our generals and our admirals that basically what that means is they have to take military personnel to do that work, which means they don't have the time to do the training that they need to do to be prepared to fight and defend this country.

The other concern we have with some of the reductions that we would be taking out of DOD, in the budget submitted to us this year, they were actually pushing back on facility maintenance that we needed to keep our facilities updated to only 80 percent of the maintenance that was required.

So, Mr. Chairman, I think it's vitally important that we do a lot for deficit reduction. I think it's vitally important that we look at the fact, for example, that on some of our stimulus bills we're talking about $800 billion. In this, we're talking about several million dollars.

But I think the most important thing, Mr. Chairman, is that we make sure we are giving DOD the incentives they need to make sure they are prioritizing correctly the dollars that they have and that we not take money off of the top line of the defense budget, which I think would be detrimental to us at this time.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I hope we will oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to answer my good friend's question by saying I absolutely believe what Admiral Mullen said. When you look at the efficiencies that the Department of Defense has been talking about, we're talking about roughly $179 million. But I would suggest my friend look at comparing that to the $800 billion that we spent on a stimulus package which I voted against because I realized what it was doing to the deficit in this country, exactly what the admiral mentioned.

The other thing, Mr. Chairman, that I would suggest to the gentleman is, quite honestly, I will tell him I do not know if the Constitution mandates or gives us the authority to bail out the auto industry or the insurance industry or the banking industry or the mortgage industry or whatever else we've been bailing out, but one thing I do know is this. When some of the smartest people this Nation has ever birthed came together and agreed on one thing in our Constitution, the thing they mandated that this Congress do is to maintain strong armies and navies and to defend this country. And one of the things I unabashedly will say is that we need to stand firm and make sure the Department of Defense has the dollars that they need to defend and protect freedom and to pass it on to our children and our grandchildren. And I believe this amendment goes a step towards taking that ability away from them.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I hope we will reject the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, I appreciate the gentleman's amendment and I appreciate his work on the Armed Services Committee. He's always very thoughtful and always committed to the national defense of our country.

As I listened to him over and over again, I was agreeing with many of the things that he said. I think oftentimes the decisions that the Department of Defense has made under the guise of efficiencies have not been efficiencies at all. They could have actually cost us more. I think, secondly, they have been made without being well thought out. I think sometimes they have backfilled their analyses after they made those decisions.

But as I read the gentleman's amendment, basically it would suspend all the sourcing and workforce management policies based on all of DOD's efficiency initiatives, which is a wide gamut. Mr. Chairman, I think that, even though, as I mentioned before, I think oftentimes the Department of Defense has been wrong in some of its efficiencies, that doesn't mean they've been wrong in every situation. And one of the things that I think is a vital flaw in the gentleman's amendment is that there's no offset for the amendment to cover the reverse on the planned savings. In fact, according to the information I have been given, the cost of not implementing these efficiencies could be as much as $3 billion. That is off of the top line of the Defense budget. And I know the gentleman would agree with me that, at this particular point in time, such a huge hit to the Department of Defense would not be in the best interest of the national defense of the country.

So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I hope we will oppose the amendment. I hope that I can work with the gentleman and other members of the committee so we can make sure DOD gets this right as they move down the road. But certainly we don't want to put this kind of impact on our men and women in uniform at this time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much. I see my good friend from Pennsylvania is on his feet, and I know that he is going to help me help small businesses because that is the simplicity of this amendment.

It is simple. It is engaging, embracing. It is recognizing that all of us have our good neighbors back in our district. It is also an affirmation of the importance of the work of the United States military, and the many, many small businesses who desire to be of service. And so this amendment is simply informational, but it has a basis in success; outreach, to make sure that our small businesses around the Nation have a sense of what available opportunities are there for them.

It calls for renewed vigor in advocating and constructing effective policies that will make the United States the most talented, diverse, effective, and powerful workforce in the increasingly globalized economy.

We also realize, and I always say to my small businesses that they are the job creators of the 21st Century, and they do so in conjunction with the United States military. It may be janitorial services, painting buildings, mowing lawns, and related activities. Our small businesses can do that.

So this amendment simply asks the Department of Defense, as it outsources its work, to make sure that it reaches out to the small business community so that they will be, if I might use the vernacular, in the mix. They will have the understanding and the opportunity to get jobs, to get business based on their qualifications and based upon their ability to do work.

In addition, might I say that many of us have come across situations where our base leadership is trying to be fiscally responsible and has taken in business that they had heretofore outsourced. My point is that it is important to assess that impact on small businesses.

I heard a discussion earlier on the floor that we want to equalize the playing field for our small businesses. We know that the larger companies, they have got the roadmap. This is simply an opportunity to say to Americans, all of you are taxpayers, all of you have the opportunity to do something for the United States military, and that may be using your talents as a small business to have the opportunity.

Let's outreach so they have the information. Let's make sure that we are engaged. Let's make sure that we create jobs.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my amendment #31 to H.R. 1540, ``National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2011,'' which requires the Secretary of Defense to utilize an outreach program to attract small and minority owned businesses prior to the outsourcing of military contracts related to local military bases.

Throughout my tenure in Congress, I have sponsored legislation that promotes diversity. I stand proudly before you today to call for renewed vigor in advocating and constructing effective policies that will make the United States the most talented, diverse, effective, and powerful workforce in an increasingly globalized economy. This amendment will require the Department of Defense to consider the impact that changes to current outsourcing guidelines will have on small minority and women owned business by requiring them to engage with these businesses. Promoting diversity is more than just an idea it requires an understanding that there is a need to have a process that will ensure the inclusion of minorities and women in all areas of American life.

As a practical matter the Department of Defense has the discretion to choose whether a contract should be in-sourced or out-source. Since March of 2009 it is understood that certain federal contracts that were formerly completed by civilian employees would be returned to federal employees. It is important to find balance between contracts that should be conducted by the federal government versus civilian contractors. As it stands the policies implemented by the DOD has the unintended consequence of harming small minority and women owned businesses by taking away civilian contracts that are not inherently serving a federal government purpose such as janitorial services, painting building, mowing lawns and related activities. These service contracts which tend to be the bread and butter for minority and women owned business are slowly being withdrawn and returned to the federal government.

How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 1 minute to the distinguished ranking member.

Mr. Chairman, I hope my good friend from Pennsylvania listens to both the distinguished ranking member and myself. This is not an amendment that opposes outsourcing. In fact, it is an amendment that affirms that outsourcing occurs, and to ask that that playing field be even more even by attention being given to our small, minority- and women-owned businesses.

It has been documented that small businesses have lost an estimated $13.8 billion in business opportunity because they cannot fairly compete for Federal contracts because larger companies are allowed to bundle the contracts, the practice of accepting mega-contracts for large jobs that only they have the resources to handle--under the condition that they receive smaller contracts that could have been given out to small businesses.

I want our small businesses and minority-owned businesses and women- owned businesses to be in the mix, have an outreach program. There's nothing wrong with added leverage of outreach for all our small businesses.

And let me say something else, Mr. Chairman. It is also to say that if a small business has a contract and it's hauled back in, it's pulled back in, let us assess how that is impacting the loss of jobs. Forty jobs, a constituent that came to our attention, Hallmark, lost by bringing in the business.

So by no means is this an opportunity to block outsourcing, and I call it contracting out. It is the business of supporting our small businesses.

Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to support this very evenhanded, very vigorous amendment to support the hardworking Americans--small, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses. I ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

One of the questions, Mr. Chairman, that this body and the administration often face is whether a certain task is best performed by employees of the Department of Defense or whether that task is best performed by those working for contractors competing for the right to do that business.

There are two things I know about this issue. The first is that it is one we always debate because it's a very difficult one to resolve. And the second is that I don't think either answer is always the right one. I think any strategy that presupposes that having employees do a job isn't right and a strategy that presupposes having contractors do a job isn't right.

I think we've built a bipartisan consensus around the proposition that, on a case-by-case basis over time, we should collect evidence and decide whether or not a certain function is best performed by employees of the Department of Defense or whether it is best performed on a competitive contracted-out basis.

The purpose of my amendment is to address what I believe is an imbalance in this evidence-gathering process that goes under the name of an efficiency initiative.

I don't think there's a Member on this floor who would oppose an efficiency initiative. But efficiency is not something that presupposes that one answer is always better than the others. And I think the record shows that we're presently living under an initiative that presupposes that contracting out is better than having Federal employees perform that function.

Here's the evidence:

Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2010, Department of Defense services performed by contracting agencies--that is to say companies-- increased from $73 billion in fiscal 2001 to $181 billion in fiscal 2010. This is an increase of 147 percent, or about 15 percent per year. During the same period of time, the cost of compensating Department of Defense civilian employees

grew from $41 billion in fiscal 2001 to $69 billion in fiscal 2010, a 68 percent increase, or just under 7 percent per year.

Now, I am not prejudging as to whether the decisions that make up those aggregate numbers were all right or all wrong. That would be certainly beyond anyone's capability to do. But I think that kind of imbalance shows that we're not conducting the kind of careful, fact- driven, merit-driven evidentiary process that we ought to be following.

So here's what my amendment does. It says that when our bill is signed by the President, that there will be a 60-day period where there will just be a timeout, where we will stop the contracting-out process. We'll ask the Department of Defense, we'll direct the Department of Defense to do two things: to answer the question of whether the decisions it has been taking are truly based on the merits and cost benefit or whether there are other factors involved. It will then ask the Department of Defense to certify that the laws and procedures that we set up in the past to make such decisions have, in fact, been followed. At the conclusion of that 60-day period, reports will be given to the Armed Services Committee and the other defense committees of the Congress, and we will collectively review those reports and make a decision, in time for next year's bill, what to do.

So this is an amendment that does not favor contracting out or keeping work in the hands of Federal employees. This is an amendment that says that we should reflect on the fact that we've had a 147 percent increase in contracted-out services at the time we've had a 68 percent increase in the compensation of civilian employees. We should pause for 60 days after the bill is enacted, reflect the accuracy of that record, and then collectively make a decision for the future as to what's best for the country.

I think this is a reasonable approach to this issue. I would urge a ``yes'' vote from both Republicans and Democrats.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank my friend for yielding.

My objection, respectfully, to this amendment is it supplants the decision of the commander in the field with the judgment of the Congress. I frankly agree that there are very, very few circumstances I could imagine where we would not want our troops in the field to be fully armed to their complete comfort and satisfaction level. And so it's hard for me to imagine a circumstance where that's not the case.

But it's easy for me to understand a circumstance where the person in the field who is charged with the responsibility of achieving the mission and achieving maximum protection of his or her troops should have the authority to make that decision.

So my objection to this is not the intent. I think we share it. My objection is the fact that the amendment supplants the judgment of that commander in the field and replaces it with the judgment we are making here thousands of miles away based on facts that we could not possibly foresee.

So although I share the gentleman's intent, for that reason I would respectfully encourage the Members to vote ``no'' on the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to ask my colleagues to support an amendment and restore fiscal common sense back to government.

This amendment would save the U.S. taxpayers up to $310 million, which would be paid to a private company in Avondale, Louisiana for what? For closing. And before we get too far into policy and other things, I want to actually read the language of the amendment so that the American people can understand exactly what we're doing, Mr. Chairman.

The amendment simply says that the Secretary of Defense may not make any payments pursuant to section 2325 of title 10, United States Code, to a contractor related to the restructuring or closure of a shipyard manufacturing complex located in Avondale, Louisiana.

Now, many people may say, well, what am I attempting to stop? Let me just take a minute and say what's going on here. We have a business in Avondale, Louisiana that employs almost 5,000 shipbuilders. They were spun off this year. Northrop Grumman received $1.4 billion for this company. By the way, Northrop Grumman made $530 million this quarter. So the new company, Huntington Ingalls, is closing the shipyard. And because they're closing the shipyard, the U.S. Government--the taxpayers of this country--will pay them up to $310 million for closing.

That's insanity, Mr. Chairman. And as I met with those employees last week, they said, Congressman, we don't know if you can stop it, but the offensive part, the part that makes this very hard for us, is the fact that our tax dollars are being used to pay our employer who is giving us all pink slips.

So I would just implore my colleagues to save the Federal Government $310 million in a time when we're cutting Medicare, in a time when we're cutting our children's future, cutting their education, and we're not feeding the hungry. So this is an attempt to save $310 million.

And I would also add to all of my colleagues who have great ideas and are looking for a pay-for, I am volunteering $310 million out of my district so that we can put back into the Federal Government so that we can pay down the debt and do other things. But we do not need this $310 million going to a private company who made $45 million just this quarter for closing.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to clear up some things.

I don't want this shipyard to close, but I want to be crystal clear about this. The Huntington Eagles just christened a ship a couple of weeks ago; and while they christened the ship with all of their employees there, they took the time to announce to their employees that we are closing. The 3,000 employees that are here, you will no longer be here. We are shutting down. We're closing. It's not personal. It's business.

As much as I don't like it, this is a private business that has decided that they are going to close. What I don't want to do is take those taxpayer dollars and reward them for closing in the process.

So when you talk about they can retool or do something in the future, Mr. Chairman, I don't want to pretend or mislead the American people. They have yet to bid on a shipbuilding contract since they have acquired the yard. They have no intentions to build ships there in the future.

As we talk about what they could do with the yard and this may force a closure, they have decided that they are going to close. They made $45 million in the first quarter of this year. They announced that they're not going to bid on ships, they're not going to do anything. They're not going to stay open. Why would we give them $310 million of taxpayer dollars and then pretend that we're fiscally responsible? It's not fiscally responsible.

The good thing for me is I don't have to go back to my district, whether it's Virginia or Missouri, and explain to my constituents why I'm fighting to give a company in Louisiana $310 million while I'm cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and all of these other things.

I just wanted to clear up the fact that it's not an assumption that they're going to close. They already have informed their employees that we're closing. Hey, it's been a good ride. Thirty-five hundred employees. See you later. Six thousand indirect jobs. We wish we could stay, but we've made another decision.

It is a private company's right to decide when they want to close. And I disagree with their decision, but I respect that this is America and they have a right to do that. But I have a right to be upset and to try to block Federal dollars going to them, and that's $310 million going to a company for quitting. That's not the American way, Mr. Chairman.

And I would just ask my colleagues to support the amendment and not give $310 million to a company who just made $45 million in 3 months that's quitting on the American people.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.