Service-disabled veterans would have to navigate less bureaucracy before winning government contracts under legislation that’s been folded into the House defense authorization.

 The appeals process for small business programs intended to benefit those veterans would be consolidated, so they’d only have to deal with the Small Business Administration, reports Bloomberg BNA. Currently, the job of determining eligibility for contract set-aside programs is shared by the SBA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 That provision originated in H.R. 2882.

 It’s one of four stand-alone Small Business Committee bills that the House Armed Services Committee incorporated into the annual defense bill, H.R. 4435. The others are:

 - H.R. 4094, which would require the SBA to clearly identify contracts that are bundled or consolidated.

 - H.R. 2751, which would restrict the types of contracts that could be bid on through “reverse auctions.” Bidders in that kind of process offer a series of rapid-fire bids in an effort to make the lowest offer.

 - H.R. 776, which would allow the SBA to guarantee 90 percent of losses, up from 70 percent. The goal is to make more small businesses eligible to compete for construction contracts.

 “The cooperation between the two committees has resulted in meaningful reforms that increase opportunities for small business competition, innovation, and job creation, while also ensuring that the Department of Defense can meet the needs of the warfighter and rely on a strong small business industrial base,” Small Business Chairman Sam Graves said in an e-mail.

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