Facing a Jan. 19 deadline to finalize fiscal year 2018 funding, Congress has the choice to pass a comprehensive spending plan or resort to a temporary fix called a “continuing resolution,” a tactic that funds the government at 2017 levels but doesn’t allow for spending changes. Lawmakers used this measure three times in 2017 to keep the government’s lights on. While perhaps the easy solution in hyper-partisan Washington, this pattern of kicking the can down the road has serious consequences for many — especially for women government contractors, a group of small business owners the government has pledged to help.
More than 20 years ago, the government set a goal of granting at least 5 percent of its small business contracts to women-owned companies — a modest objective, considering the growing ranks of female entrepreneurs. Sadly, the government has hit that target only once. Women-owned businesses now number 10 million, or more than a third of U.S. firms. Yet statistically, they are practically shut out of the competitive world of federal contracting.
One contributing factor is how Washington pays its bills. The reliance on continuing resolutions — temporary appropriations bills that fund operations at current levels — means policymakers can’t change their spending priorities. And because many agencies can’t open expired contracts for new competitive bids while continuing resolutions are in place, they often just re-up with existing vendors to keep services flowing.
Here’s the rub: The federal government does the vast majority of its business with male-owned companies. Under a continuing resolution, many women-owned companies can’t get their foot in the door, because the bridge contracts that agencies tend to use with existing contractors do not afford opportunities for new contractors. Even under the best of circumstances, before accounting for this additional obstacle, the Department of Commerce reports that women-owned firms are 21 percent less likely than their male-owned counterparts to win government contracts.
If the government continues to fund itself through continuing resolutions, women federal contractors will not have as many opportunities to get into the game. That’s bad for women contractors and potentially a waste of taxpayer dollars, because the government isn’t actively seeking the best deal or the best solutions by allowing companies to compete.
Lawmakers in Washington can support women contractors by doing what we sent them there to do — come together, work out their differences and put together a budget and regular appropriations bills, instead of abrogating their responsibilities by passing one continuing resolution after another.
We understand continuing resolutions may represent a necessary evil to avoid shutting down the government over differences in budgetary policy. But if women business owners did their finances the way the government runs ours, they wouldn’t be in business long enough to compete for anything.
Jane Campbell is the president of Women Impacting Public Policy, a nonpartisan organization advocating on behalf of women entrepreneurs, and director of the National Development Council’s Washington office.
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