Political Quotes

“I join with my friend, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich] in being very disappointed and expressing our disappointment in the fact that this bill has come back from conference that repeals the cooperative purchasing program, which was a program established under Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act in the 103rd Congress. This act allows local governments to buy at a discount items off the GSA schedule that the Federal Government buys and at prices the Federal Government currently pays. This provision could have saved local governments, State and local governments tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Instead of passing this cost down to State and local taxpayers, the Senate, without holding one hearing, has decided to repeal this provision. I am particularly disappointed that the Group 70 schedule, a schedule with over 1,200 vendors, where over 90 percent of the vendors who applied to get on that schedule can get on, was discarded. This is going to cost State and local governments millions of dollars, perhaps billions of dollars over the next decade as they go to acquisitions of information technology, computers, and very complex procedures that take a lot of time to go out with a request for proposal, responses to the proposals, best and final.”