When President Bush signed the FY 2008-2009 war supplemental bill into law on June 30, he approved a pair of contracting reforms that had long been stalled in Congress. The enactment of these provisions has validated the legislative strategy of reform-minded legislators to pass federal contracting measures. After the House passed a series of contracting reforms in April, the measures were held up in the legislative logjam in the Senate. Nevertheless, the bills' sponsors worked doggedly in the 2008 legislative year to attach these non-controversial contracting reform bills to other legislation that would likely get through the Senate and be signed into law by the president.

When OMB Watch reported on this strategy in May, one such contracting reform bill had already been signed into law, suggesting that the coattail strategy would yield results. In the last two months, two additional reforms have become law.

The two measures enacted with the war supplemental are part of a raft of bills offered by several members of Congress in the past two years aimed at bringing accountability and transparency to the federal contracting process. The first of these provisions, the Close the Contractor Loophole Act of 2007 (H.R. 5712), holds contractors working oversees to the same fraud reporting requirements as contractors performing work in the U.S. The second, the Government Contractor Accountability Act (H.R. 3928), requires private contractors that receive more than 80 percent of their revenue from federal contracting and at least $25 million in federal contracts to report the names and salaries of their five highest-paid executives.

These two reforms were attached to multiple bills between the time they were passed by the House on April 23 and when they were signed by the president on June 30. After House passage, both bills were attached to the FY 2009 Defense Authorization Act. However, when it became clear that expedient passage of the Defense reauthorization bill in the Senate was not guaranteed, House contracting reformers hedged their bets by also attaching the provisions to the war supplemental. After a tortuous path to passage, the supplemental was signed into law.

Still left in legislative limbo are measures that would bar contractors with federal tax debt from winning new federal contracts (H.R. 4881, Contracting and Tax Accountability Act of 2008) and that would establish a database of contractors found in violation of federal laws and regulations (H.R. 3033, Contractors and Federal Spending Accountability Act of 2008). However, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) was successful in attaching his Clean Contracting Act as an amendment to the House's version of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2009. Waxman's amendment is a bundle of contracting reforms, which includes H.R. 3033, the contractor fraud database, as well as the two measures already enacted with the war supplemental.

Although the House approved the Defense reauthorization bill in May, the Senate will not consider the legislation until they return from August recess. It is still possible the contractor misconduct database (H.R. 3033) will be enacted into law through the Defense reauthorization bill, although that is not yet guaranteed.

When Congress returns in the second week of September, it will have only three weeks remaining in its legislative year. Excepting the provisions already within a version of the Defense reauthorization bill, there is little chance that Congress will send other contracting reform legislation to the president during the remainder of 2008. Despite this, contracting reform agenda items are likely to float to the top of legislative heap in January 2009.

Additionally, investigative efforts by the 110th Congress are laying the groundwork for even more and perhaps broader reforms in the next Congress. The Webb-McCaskill Wartime Contracting Commission has seated seven of eight commissioners who will begin investigating war contracting abuses; Sen. Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) Democratic Policy Committee has been holding regular hearings on contractor malfeasance in Iraq; and Waxman's committee has conducted extensive investigations of contractor waste, fraud, and abuse. These efforts continue to show major contracting problems exist and that additional reforms are necessary. At this point, Congress seems focused on increasing the transparency and accountability of the federal contracting process as opposed to changing the process itself.