Wosb Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, in 1994, Congress established a goal of awarding 5 percent of Federal contracting dollars to women-owned small businesses. Recognizing the obstacles that female entrepreneurs faced when entering and competing in the Federal marketplace, Congress identified this goal as an uphill battle. Three decades later, we can see how much of an understatement that was and how much more work has to be done.

Empowering female entrepreneurs has long been a top priority of mine. In 2000, to give women-owned firms a boost and incentivize agencies to bring in more WOSBs to compete for contracts, I wrote the law and created the WOSB program.

Today, many women-owned firms are critical partners to Federal agencies as a result of that law, yet the WOSB goal has been met only twice, and women-owned firms are not seeing the contracting opportunities that should accompany their level of participation in the market. We need to again provide a boost to the WOSB program and encourage more competition and success for WOSB firms.

My legislation that we are considering today will move more firms through the SBA's certification process so Federal agencies have a larger pool of companies that can trigger WOSB competitions.

Mr. Speaker, it will further protect the integrity of the program. We want to ensure that women-owned firms are who they say they are because that is who the program is designed to empower.

We expect that contracting officers will have more confidence working with WOSBs, knowing that the SBA has already verified them.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support this bill.

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