What the chamber passed
Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act of 2025
What this does
The bill bars federal contract solicitations from setting minimum education requirements for proposed contractor personnel unless the contracting officer includes a written justification explaining why the agency's needs cannot be met without the requirement and how the requirement meets those needs. The Office of Management and Budget must issue implementing guidance to agencies within 180 days, including instructions for those justifications and encouragement to use alternatives to education requirements. The new rule applies to solicitations issued 15 months after enactment. A 2001 defense authorization provision governing education requirements in service contracting is repealed once OMB's guidance takes effect, and the Comptroller General must report to Congress on agency compliance within three years.
Passed the Senate by unanimous consent
Passed the House by voice vote
How we know · 5 sourced claims
- A solicitation may not set a minimum education requirement for proposed contractor personnel unless the contracting officer includes a written justification explaining why the agency's needs cannot be met without the requirement and how the requirement meets those needs.Source: Sec. 2(a) (new 41 U.S.C. 3313(a))
- The Office of Management and Budget must issue implementing guidance to agencies within 180 days of enactment, including justification instructions for contracting officers and encouragement to use alternatives to education requirements.Source: Sec. 2(c)
- The new rule applies to solicitations issued on or after 15 months after enactment.Source: Sec. 2(d)
- Section 813 of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, which governs education requirements in service contracting, is repealed as of the date OMB's required guidance becomes effective.Source: Sec. 2(e)
- The Comptroller General must submit to Congress an evaluation of agency compliance with the new requirement within three years of enactment.Source: Sec. 2(f)
Reported lobbying
At least
2
organizations named this measure in a lobbying filing.
A floor, not a total. Those organizations were counted by the client name on 2 quarterly reports filed by 2 lobbying firms in 2026 Q1 and 2026 Q2. The disclosure form takes a free text description of the issue, so an organization that lobbied this measure without naming it is not counted here.
The filings record that lobbying was reported on the measure. The form has no per-bill dollar figure and no field for a position (a filer may describe one in its own words), so nothing here says how much was spent or which side an organization took.
From the LD-2 quarterly lobbying filings published at lda.gov by the Senate Office of Public Records. Read for 2025 Q1, 2025 Q2, 2025 Q3, 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1 and 2026 Q2. Our copy holds 2 fewer filings for 2025 Q4 and 7 fewer filings for 2026 Q2 than the Senate's register counts, so those quarters are the filings we could read rather than every one filed. 2026 Q3 is still inside its filing window, so that quarter is only the filings posted so far.