Policy Spotlight

PSC is Ready for “Regular Order”

by Alan Chvotkin, PSC Executive Vice President and Counsel

The coronavirus pandemic is still having a significant effect on our Nation’s population and on the business community. The Federal contractor community has not been immune to either the personal impacts that the virus has had on its workforces and families or on the business impacts of the marketplace.

To their credit, Federal agencies have worked diligently to maintain their mission focus and most contractors have used a wide range of alternative strategies to keep employees employed and engaged. Yet more remains to be accomplished legislatively, regulatorily and administratively to continue the response and the recovery. PSC is continuing our advocacy to fulfill our COVID-19 priorities: (1) keep the government working; (2) keep contractors working; and (3) ensure contractors are paid for the work they do.

It is possible that the Senate will act on another round of COVID-19 response legislation, building on or significantly changing the May House-passed version called the “HEROES Act.”

Yet there are encouraging signs of the “return to regular order.”

From the Congressional side, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version of the FY 21 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Senate has already started debating that bill. The full House Armed Services Committee completed its markup on their version of the bill on July 1, 2020, with full House consideration a top priority after the House returns from the July 4th recess. The Senate Intel Committee has completed action on its version of the FY21 Intel Authorization Act, and the bill was adopted as an amendment to the Senate NDAA. Of note, based on our continued work with these committees over the last several months, we have been successful in having provisions to benefit contractors in each of these bills, with additional opportunities yet ahead. We have detailed those accomplishments for our members through our regular communications channels.

In mid-July, the House Appropriations Committee will finally begin marking up the FY21 Appropriations acts and bringing those bills to the House floor. While enacting all of the appropriations acts before the start of the fiscal year on October 1st has been a high priority for PSC, it

appears unlikely that Congress will complete work on all of the appropriations bills by the October first deadline, so a Continuing Resolution is almost inevitable.

On the regulatory side, we are asking for, and are expecting, a new wave of essential acquisition-related regulations to be issued. awaiting action. First are the rules relating to the implementation of “Section 889(B)” – referring to that section of the FY19 NDAA that prohibits the government from doing business with any contractor that uses certain telecommunication or video surveillance equipment provided by certain Chinese companies in their business operations – unrelated to the performance of government contracts. That portion of the law takes effect on August 13, 2020, and agencies and contractors need the regulations to understand the scope of definitions, what the term “use” means, and how other provisions are to be interpreted so as to know how to comply with them. For almost a year, PSC has been asking for proposed rules to be published for comment.

Next, we are still waiting for OMB to clear a proposed DFARS rule to further implement the DoD Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program; that rule has been awaiting OMB action for almost two months. While continued on page 23