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Kerry-Bond Letter Reminds Defense of its SBIR Obligation
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), formerly known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, may have cut the amount of research funding it is required to award small tech companies, but the Department of Defense still must meet its full 2.5 percent set-aside obligations, points out Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Christopher "Kit" Bond of Missouri in a strongly worded, bipartisan letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Senators are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, respectively.
An eleventh hour insertion in the 2002 Defense Appropriations Act reduced MDA's set aside requirement for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program from $148.8 million to only $75 million [see the 1/11/02 SSTI Weekly Digest for more information].
The Kerry-Bond letter reminds Secretary Rumsfeld that the Small Business Act requires the Department of Defense to award 2.5 percent of its entire extramural R&D budget to tech companies with fewer than 500 employees — regardless from which component within the department those funds originate. The legal argument suggests other defense agencies, such as the Navy, Army or Air Force, would have to cover the $75 million obligation shirked by MDA.
The Jan. 29, 2002, letter requests that Secretary Rumsfeld "reply to us in writing by close of business on Friday, February 8, 2002, as to how the Department plans to make up that difference."
The full Kerry-Bond letter is available on the Senate Small Business Committee website: http://www.senate.gov/~sbc/