David Thomas: “Let me just go over some of these folks who do support it: National Federation of Independent Businesses, U.S. Chamber…”

“Let me just go over some of these folks who do support it: National Federation of Independent Businesses, U.S. Chamber, Associated General Contractors of America, National Association of Women Business Owners, Consulting Engineers Council, Business Coalition for Fair Competition, Design Professionals Coalition, and many others. So it is designed to say basically that in those areas of Government activities and Government operations, for those things that are done that are basically commercial, there ought to at least be an opportunity for the private sector to compete. It is designed to open the potential market of $30 billion nationally for businesses, for the private sector, both large and small. And as a matter of fact, most of the contracts would go to small business. It is designed to level the playing field--those are words we use a lot, but they have meaning--for thousands of businesses in the whole economy of this country from the very ordinary kinds of things to high- technology things--janitorial services, hospitality and recreation service businesses, engineering services, laboratory and testing services. As a matter of fact, I really became involved in this in the legislature in the State of Wyoming where we had government competing for laboratory services, where the private sector was available there to do that with the same kind of quality or even better and at less cost.”