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What Happened to Section 828 Buy American Provision? |
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In July of 2003, I wrote the
following commentary and posted it on the Moveon.org forum:
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What happened to the BUY AMERICAN provision in the Defense Bill? The following is a section from H.R. 1588 [EAS] as agreed to by the Senate. It is bill to provide for the defense of the United States of America. The version as agreed to by the House of Representatives H.R. 1588 [EH] had a section that is missing from the Senate version. Section 828 required the Defense Department to BUY AMERICAN. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c108:3:./temp/~c108zFJK2L:e320407: The version of this bill that was passed in the Senate, the BUY AMERICA provision is strangely missing. What’s going on in the Senate? Who are they representing? Don’t they believe that it is important for American’s to provide for American Defense? http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:5:./temp/~c108zFJK2L::
Here is another interesting provision: SEC. 812. PUBLIC-PRIVATE COMPETITIONS FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FUNCTIONS.(a) PILOT PROGRAM FOR BEST VALUE SOURCE SELECTION FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES- (1) AUTHORITY- The Secretary of Defense may carry out a pilot program for use of a best value criterion in the selection of sources for performance of information technology services for the Department of Defense. (2) CONVERSION TO PRIVATE SECTOR PERFORMANCE- (A) Under the pilot program, an analysis of the performance of an information technology services function for the Department of Defense under section 2461(b)(3) of title 10, United States Code, shall include an examination of the performance of the function by Department of Defense civilian employees and by one or more private contractors to demonstrate whether change to performance by the private sector will result in the best value to the Government over the life of the contract, including in the examination the following:
How can we be sure that a foreign company has not been infiltrated by our enemies? Do we want our guys get out on the battlefield with potentially defective equipment supplied by foreigners? Information systems are just as important as the equipment. They provide for the distribution of supplies to our troops. What good are tanks if you don’t have gasoline? What good are troops if you can’t get food and other supplies to them? Early on in the Iraq war, we heard reports that our troops were going hungry. They weren’t getting supplies. What is the Senate doing to our military? What is the Bush Administration thinking about with outsourcing America’s Defense? These questions need answers. DEMAND ANSWERS - America’s defense depends on it.
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| After
more research, I found out who was behind the lobbying for
removing the 'Buy America' provision from the Defense
Department budget. And I posted this on the
Moveon forum as well:
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Now we know. The House version of our defense bill had a section 828 that specified that the defense department should BUY AMERICAN. In the Senate version of the bill, Section 828 - Buy American was removed. http://www.itaa.org/govt/docs/itproblemwithhr1588.pdf
The Information Technology Association of America is an Anti-American organization the promotes outsourcing and the importation of cheap foreign labor to take the jobs of Americans. Members of this organization spread a lot of money around Washington, DC.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=B12
Now look at campaign contributions to our Senators
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.asp?Ind=B12&recipdetail=S&sortorder=A&Cycle=2002 That's what happened to Section 828.
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At the time the above was
written, I was only aware of the problem of outsourcing and
was trying to figure out why that was being done because of
the obvious risks to our nation to outsource the beating
heart of our economy - now and into the future.
Now, five years later with a lot of research behind me, I
see that it wasn't just about outsourcing high tech jobs, it
was an attack on our economy - and our nation by the enemy
within.
And it should be noted that while this factsheet on a House member's website talks about steel and concrete for the highways, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) provides the connection between the physical materials used in highways to the Information Technology sector of the economy because ISTEA was more about building "smart highways" than it was about building physical infrastructure. And the Defense Department connection obviously is because the Interstate Highway System was built as a function of National Defense. Buy American and Domestic
Steel Intelligent Highway Systems
Lockheed's partnership with the COMMUNIST Chinese to install surveillance equipment on our nation's highways and to equip and staff the data collection - command and control facilities to handle to monitoring, tracking and dissemination of data. http://www.channelingreality.com/NAU/digging_in_the_dirt.htm |
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