U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy credited an Oxford manufacturer Monday with an idea for reforming the Buy American Act he’ll introduce Tuesday in Washington.
Murphy unveiled the “Full Disclosure in Federal Contracting Act,” which he said would help American companies by making the government procurement process more transparent.
Murphy said that while the Buy American Act, first passed in 1933, is supposed to give a preference to American manufacturers in supplying the federal government, it “is now so riddled full of holes that the exception to the Buy American act has become the rule.”
George Dewey, the president of Dewey Manufacturing, an Oxford-based maker of gun-cleaning supplies, said Monday that last year loopholes in the bill cost him a contract to supply federal air marshals with kits to clean their pistols to a company based in South Korea. The New Haven Register published a report on the issue last year.
“George and I have been talking about this for the last couple of months due to a bid he lost when a company that claimed to be a U.S. company won a bid,” Murphy said inside Dewey’s business Monday.
“One of the problems we talked about was that a lot of the manufacturers that are bidding on government work don’t understand that a ‘Buy American’ preference isn’t that much of a preference any longer,” Murphy added. “So they bid on a particular contract not knowing what overseas competitors are going to fit into the exceptions.”
Calling the proposal he will introduce Tuesday “at its essence George Dewey’s idea,” Murphy said it would provide more disclosure to American manufacturers and raise awareness about how weak the Buy American Act has become.
“George’s idea was pretty simple: that when a bid comes out for a particular contract it should state on that contract what countries are going to fit the particular Buy American exemptions on that contract,” the congressman said.
Dewey said Monday the law would help companies like his know when to try to bid for a contract.
“Most astute businessmen have a pretty good feel where and how they can be competitive,” he said. “If you know the competition, most American companies will know right off the bat if they should even get in the race.”
Murphy said the problem is so bad that there are only countries that do not qualify for some exception of the Buy American Act: North Korea, Cuba, and Iran.
“Every other country in the world will qualify, under some exception somewhere, to the Buy American law,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
Murphy said Monday that one he introduces the bill, it would “likely” go before the Government Oversight Committee, which he serves on, but that it probably won’t see a vote by the full house this year.
“It’s pretty late in the session,” he said, adding he would “look for opportunities” to attach the legislation as an amendment to a spending bill, a tactic with which he has been successful before. “We’ll push it as far as it can go.”
