Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business Relief Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. TITUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support H.R. 1313, the Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business Relief Act of 2015. Veterans who are rated as 100 percent disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs and who own at least 51 percent of their small business receive preferred status in the Federal contracting process.
If the veteran small-business owner passes away, the surviving family members and business partners are not allowed any time to transition away from this preferred status, thereby putting their businesses in jeopardy of losing any Federal contracts they may have. Last year, there were an estimated 500,000 of these businesses nationwide.

This bill provides a 3-year transition period during which the business would keep its preferential status and any Federal contracts associated with that status should the veteran owner pass away.

Current law does, however, allow the surviving spouse to maintain preferred status for up to 3 years following the death of a veteran owner, but only if that veteran had a 100 percent service-connected disability rating and died due to the disability.

H.R. 1313 further expands the transition period from 3 to 10 years after the veteran owner's death if the veteran were either 100 percent disabled or died from a service-connected disability.

H.R. 1313 is a fair policy that will ensure we protect the hard work and investment of our service-connected disabled veterans who own small businesses.

I would like to thank Chairman Wenstrup and Ranking Member Takano of the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity of the Veterans' Affairs Committee for their support of this bill and Mr. McNerney for bringing it to us.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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