Vern Edwards

Some group has formed a political action committee (PAC) dedicated to Government contracting. From their website:

It ain't me babe, NO, NO, NO, It ain't me babe, It ain't me you're lookin' for babe!

Here is today's list of presidential nominations. The White HouseNominations Sent to the SenateNOMINATIONS SENT TO THE SENATE: Marc Andersen, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Army. Gregory Autry, of Florida, to be ChiefTo the best of my knowledge the president has not yet nominated anyone to be Administrator of Federal Procurement Policy.

I presume that your lawyer is worried about a "scope of the competition" protest against a modification to add the correct wage determination.. You are agonizing too much. You can: (1) terminate for convenience and recompete or (2) modify the contract and wait to see if you get a protest. That's about it. Why not make a decision and get on with it? Corrective action will not get easier with the passage of time.

Not necessarily. But if the president or attorney general wants to provide interpretive guidance or direction it may come in an executive order or a document such as this one, from the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel: The Test for Determining “Officer” Status Under the Appointments Clause, January 16, 2025 https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1385406/dl Or this one: Application of the Randolph-Sheppard Act to the United States Mint, September 9, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1377031/dl

Presidential Management of the Administrative State: The Not-So-Unitary Executive, 51 Duke L.J. 963 (2001-2002). https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1148&context=dlj

The E.O. reflects the concept of the "unitary executive," which has been explained as follows: Footnote omitted. See The Unitary Executive: Past, Present, and Future, by Sunstein and Vermeule (2020). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/714860 See also, The Unitary Presidency, Dodds (2019). And The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power From Washington to Bush, Calabresi and Yoo (2012).

I would set standards for knowledge of and ability to explain key acquisition concepts, principles, rules, processes, procedures, methods and techniques. standards for contract planning and design, standards the quality of files and documents in terms of organization, readability, and usability, standards for communication effectiveness, standards for the quality of arguments and presentations, standards for in-house and contractual relationship management standards for time and schedule management and more... As a supervisor I would consider my job to b to turn apprentices into skilled journeymen, some of which would go on to pursue mastery.

@C Culham The Framers intended Congress to be the preeminent branch of government. See Whittington, THE PLACE OF CONGRESS IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER, 40 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL'y 573 (June 2017): What is the president, if not an agent of Congress? According to the Constitution the president's job is to faithfully execute the laws they pass. Presidents need their consent to appoint cabinet officials, and they can remove presidents from office. A president cannot remove any of their members. And Congress has created many independent agencies. The president must report to them annually. They don't have to report to the president. Presidents must ask them to approve their budget, and they can override a president's veto. Don't be fooled by the way various congresses and voters have let presidents behave.

So standards should be based on the performance of "star" employees?

Why are there "gaps" in statutes? Congress enacts statutes (positive law) that delegate certain powers to agencies (that’s why they are called agencies), such as the power to buy goods and services. Congress leaves "gaps" in statutes for a number reasons, ignorance and carelessness being among them, and also because its members cannot be expert in everything the government does𑁋like fight wars, design weapon systems, maintain public health, and control air traffic𑁋so they leave some details about implementation to people they expect to know more. And gaps may emerge after the enactment of laws due to unanticipated developments. As agents of Congress, agencies publish regulations (administrative law) to inform the public about and direct their personnel concerning how they will use their delegated powers. The FAR is one such regulation. In doing so, agencies have as much discretion in the use of their delegated powers as the Constitution and the laws allow and as they choose to exercise. The courts and various administrative tribunals review agency actions to determine whether they have been done in compliance with statutes and their own regulations. Their decisions often lead agencies to change their regulatitons, and sometimes prompt Congress to amend their laws. A 100-page FAR would probably not be long enough to implement all the statutes that Congress has enacted to govern procurement. But a regulation that strikes out all text that does not implement a statute would presumably give agencies a lot more discretion than their own regulations currently allow. The question is whether the workforce is competent enough to exercise such discretion wisely.

Can we get off architect-engineer and design-build contracting now and back to the original topic?

So you agree with Matthew. Well, I'm in no position to refute that. But if that's true, then I think it is because those "senior acquisition folks" have not provided proper leadership, inspiration, indoctrination, education, training, and supervision to their contract specialists and contracting officers, and that those "folks" should be relieved of the authority to make contracting officer appointments and fired.

Retread! You old coot! That's 10 years before me. We need to have the Smithsonian interview you for the national archives!

Here is the language from the original 1962 statute that created the discussions law, Pub. L. 87-653, The Truth in Negotiations Act: Here is what 10 USC 3303 says today about discussions in source selection: Here is what 41 USC 3703 says: That's it for the statutes. Based on those texts, previous statutory versions of those texts going back to 1962, decades of mostly GAO "case law", previous procurement regulations, and subsequent regulatory analysis, policy making, and regulation drafting and redrafting leading up to the 1997 FAR Part 15 Rewrite, we got today's FAR 15.306, Exchanges with offerors after receipt of proposals, which says this: Get it? See the issue? Understand? Now, what would you do during a source selection if FAR 15.306 were to go away and all you had to deal with was the language in 10 USC 3303 and 41 USC 3703? Hmmm? That, my colleagues, might be the challenge facing you under FAR 2.0. Consider it an opportunity to excel, as an old general officer boss of mine used to tell me. There a poster in my office showing a World War II American paratrooper standing in the door of a C-47 ready to jump into Normandy on D-Day. Outside the door German flak is exploding, tracers are rising up, C-47s are going down in flames, and parachutes are drifting down. The text on the poster says, "Everything will kill you, so choose something fun." I hope for your sakes that FAR 2.0 is fun!