DoD Threatens to ‘Sledgehammer’ a Small-business Procurement Program Benefiting Contractors

The Department of Defense, the largest spender in the federal government procurement space, is carefully sifting through a core small-business contracting program.

"We are actually taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government—a program few people outside of Washington have ever heard of," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a post on X. "It's called the 8(a) program."

In a mid-January memo sent to senior Pentagon leadership, Hegseth said that the review will find contracts that are not aligned with the department's "war-fighting priorities." Then it will determine if small-business awardees are indeed performing the work that they have won, a concern addressed at purported activity of small businesses winning contracts, then passing the work to a larger company that is ineligible for the award.

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