08-09-01: Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson Awards Ceremony Remarks for The Small & Disadvantaged Business Utilization

Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson Awards Ceremony Remarks for The Small & Disadvantaged Business Utilization Thursday, August, 9, 2001

Good afternoon. I am more than pleased to be participating in today's ceremonies which honor the outstanding jobs that you and your bureaus have been doing to implement and enforce the procurement preference programs. Both the President and the Attorney General are strongly in favor of our maintaining our support of all small businesses:

Small women-owned businesses;

Small minority-owned businesses;

Small veteran-owned businesses; and

Small hubzone businesses as contractors and subcontractors of the department.

In instances when the President has discussed the status of small firms, he has expressed his intention to ensure that small companies (protected by preference programs), receive a fair proportion of the federal government's contracts and subcontracts. We in the Justice Department have every intention of supporting the President in this effort. During FY-2000, we made some significant progress:

We exceeded our total FY-1999 acquisitions from small businesses by more than $131 million, going from about $1 billion spent with small firms in FY-1999 to $1.1 billion dollars spent with small companies in FY-2000. [that's nearly 1/3 of our total procurement dollars!], and

We also exceeded the number of our FY-1999 awards to small businesses in FY-2000, going from 175,000 awards in FY-1999 to over 300,000 in FY-2000.

With your help and continued dedication, I am certain that our record for FY-2001 and beyond will be even better.

I am very mindful of the fact that you and your hard work have brought about these good developments! So, as I said before, I am more than happy to participate in this awards ceremony, and I congratulate and welcome each and every one of you.