Mike Levin: “one of the arguments that has been made is that if this conference report is enacted that the private industry will be…”

“one of the arguments that has been made is that if this conference report is enacted that the private industry will be reluctant to bid on the work of the closed depots. In fact, some elements of industry had announced that they intended to bid on the Kelly and McClellan work well before the compromise was even written. Most of the concerns raised by those groups relate either to features of the current law that they don't like, or to features of the compromise that the Department of Defense has accepted as fair and not sought to change. We cannot just simply give the work to industry without any competition. We must have fair competition. That was the purpose of these provisions in the bill. Those of us who wrote these provisions have no depots at stake, and no issues at stake in our States. In fact, we voted against the provision of the Depot Caucus in the conference because we thought it was one-sided. I voted against a similar provision which was offered by Senators here during our deliberations in the Armed Services Committee. But those of us who have drafted the provision in this final bill have intended and attempted--and we think succeeded--in drafting a provision which will ensure fair and open competition. That is our goal. We don't want to tilt this one way or the other. We couldn't get the parties to reach an agreement. We waited months for the parties to try to reach an agreement. We tried to negotiate an agreement that everybody would agree to.”