The Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 last night. The bill included the Webb/McCaskill wartime contracting commission, and, according to BNA (subscription required), these provisions on military contracting: Immediately before voting on the measure, the Senate agreed 51-42 to adopt an amendment that would impose new limits on Defense Department implementation of the public-private competition process under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76, and eliminate OMB competitive sourcing goals. The amendment, offered by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), includes provisions that would:

• exclude health care and retirement costs from the A-76 cost comparison process in DOD public-private competitions;
• prohibit federal agencies from converting to private-sector performance any function performed by 10 or more in-house employees without implementing a formal cost comparison that includes an in-house most efficient organization (MEO) and results in a determination that contractor performance will result in savings of $10 million or 10 percent of the personnel-related costs of the agency tender;
• eliminate automatic recompetition of work at the end of the performance period when an A-76 competition is won by federal employees;
• expand appeal rights for federal employees who have lost A-76 competitions to contractors; and
• require DOD to issue guidance on allowing federal employees to compete for new work or for certain work currently being performed by contractors.