OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Date: May 14, 2015
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Defense

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Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding the time.

Mr. Chairman, I want to present an amendment that is bipartisan and that deals with AbilityOne agencies.

The Department of Defense has created three procurement programs for Afghanistan, central Asian states, and Djibouti to support businesses and local economies in these countries and to cultivate positive relationships in the region and the world. The problem is, while I surely appreciate their intentions, there have been unintended consequences with this program in implementing these programs.

The GSA has allowed businesses located in these countries to supply products manufactured by AbilityOne agencies, which employ blind and disabled Americans. The result of that policy has been devastating to many of these AbilityOne agencies across the country. We have seen job losses here in America in implementing this new policy by the Department of Defense.

This amendment addresses the problem of these job losses by exempting those AbilityOne agencies from this Department of Defense procurement program. If you look at what has happened with this program, we have seen facilities not only in Louisiana but in States like New York, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, North Carolina, Nebraska, and Washington all experience job losses here in America from shipping those jobs over to foreign countries.

Again, I think--or I surely would hope--that that was not the intention of the program, Mr. Chairman, to take jobs away from disabled Americans and ship those jobs overseas.

So what this amendment does is restore those jobs back here in America for those blind and other disabled Americans who have one of the highest underemployment populations in the country. Let's keep those jobs here. We can continue building relations with other countries, but just not at the expense of American jobs for disabled workers. That is what the amendment does.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany), who is a cosponsor.

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