The Trump administration has 20 additional ideas for improving federal acquisition.
These range from dramatically increasing the simplified acquisition and micro purchase thresholds to raising the dollar figures on task order protests to allocating more money for acquisition workforce training.
The Office of Management and Budget submitted these legislative proposals to Congress in July.
“These are a good first step and there is a lot more that can be done overall,” said Rich Beutel, a senior researcher at the George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting and a former a congressional staff member, in an interview with Federal News Network. “I think a major focus here is to create a unitary acquisition framework across all federal agencies, particularly the CFO Act agencies.”
OMB submitted several of the 20 proposals to Congress previously, such as the provision to update the standard for the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule program to seek out the best value for the government, rather than the “lowest overall cost alternative.”
At the same time, Beutel and others say it’s the new proposals that are creating a lot of excitement and maybe some consternation in industry.
The administration is seeking to raise both the simplified acquisition threshold to $10 million and the micropurchase threshold to $100,000, both by 2030.
Alan Thomas, a former commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said he believes this is the administration’s attempt to increase the discretion of the acquisition workforce in making award decisions. He said the administration is giving specific focus to fixed price contracts and commercial products and services, particularly under the SAT proposal.
“Contract actions under the SAT often bear a similarity to generally accepted commercial practices. SAT purchases subject contractors to fewer compliance requirements, including fewer formal programs and certifications and less reporting and oversight. SAT purchases also allow agencies to transact with interested sources using simplified acquisition procedures (SAP), which generally entail shorter solicitations and less stringent competition rules, greater reliance on a contractor’s existing product literature, more flexibility in vendor selection, and minimal documentation requirements. This relief makes it easier and less costly for agencies and contractors to do business,” the proposals stated. “[T]his legislative proposal would raise the SAT to $500,000 for commercial and non-commercial acquisitions. For the acquisition of commercial products and commercial services, the proposal would further raise the SAT to $10 million over a phase-in period and raise the SAP for acquiring commercial products and services from $9 million to $50 million over the same phase-in period. Raising the SAT to $10 million for the acquisition of commercial products and commercial services could capture an additional 14.6 percent of spend making those contract actions eligible for the relief provided by the SAT. This translates to over 100,000 federal transactions being subject to less government-unique compliance burden and eligible for streamlined buying. These buys would not be subject to statutory small business set-asides, but longstanding regulatory set-asides would continue to facilitate access to meaningful opportunities for responsible small businesses that are able to submit competitive offers.”
Concerns about SAT, MPT increases
As for the MPT, the administration says it would decouple it from the Buy American Act provisions.
“It would establish a permanent cap of $15,000 to preserve existing flexibilities, as described above, for the smallest federal purchases that represented only 4 percent of total federal spend in fiscal 2024. It would continue to apply the BAA to micro-purchases above $15,000,” the proposal stated. “When the MPT increase is fully implemented at $100,000, it will streamline and reduce burden for more than 500,000 transactions annually, currently conducted by warranted contracting officers. Simultaneously, by requiring application of the BAA to purchases above $15,000, the proposal will ensure that domestic sourcing remains front-of-mind for federal buyers and commercial sellers of routine every-day products and construction materials between $15,000 and $100,000 where roughly $18 billion in BAA activity occurs each year.”
Beutel said while the actual dollar figures may require further debate, it’s high time that Congress increase the SAT and MPT to recognize changes to buying habits and inflation.
The Federal Improvement in Technology (FIT) Procurement Act, which passed the House on July 20, would increase the MPT and SAT thresholds, but only to $25,000 and $500,000.
Beutel said he believes there are some concerns in the House about increasing the thresholds too much because it would give too much leeway for vendors in how they sell to the government.
The administration proposal to permanently extend the use of Commercial Solutions Openings (CSO) to GSA, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security is another change that is attracting a lot of attention. Congress approved a pilot program for these three agencies that expires on Sept. 30, 2027.
Thomas said the administration clearly wants to drive more procurements through this approach, which many times can lead to the use of Other Transactions Agreements (OTAs).
“CSOs make the proposal pieces a lot simpler for industry and they are becoming quite popular,” he said. “The Army issued one recently that called for a 15-page slide deck to start and they wanted it in a week. This is a lot more attractive for more non-traditional industry players to respond. Then the Army will hold oral presentations for those who make it past the first round. This feels ways easier for companies who may not want to spend the resources on a traditional RFP response.”
CSO pilot success
The administration wrote that GSA has awarded nine non-FAR based contracts under its CSO authority. “Six of the nine contractors (or 67%) had not previously worked with GSA prior to using CSO procedures, and one contractor (11%) had not previously worked with the federal government. Eight of the nine contractors (89%) appeared to be non-traditional defense contractors, based upon the definition at DFARS Subpart 202.1. Additionally, GSA found CSO contracts were awarded 19 days faster on average than comparable FAR-based contracts,” the proposal stated.
Along with the CSO authority, the administration wants NASA to have the ability to move OTA prototypes to production through follow-on contracts.
“This would enable additional innovative business arrangements to expedite the development and deployment of platforms, systems, components and materials that would be available for use in both NASA missions and U.S. commercial aerospace activities,” the proposal stated. “This authority would facilitate development of new technologies by U.S. commercial entities, including private sector contribution to the costs of such development, and could enable more rapid production and availability of such technologies in the commercial market by reducing the time between the development phase and the operational phase of a project.”
Beutel said making the CSO authority permanent and giving NASA production OTA authority would open the aperture wider for OTA contracts.
“This would make it more lenient to take a successful prototype and move into production. It would make it more attractive to companies to roll the dice on these prototype activities, and if they do well, they could go to production,” he said. “These changes would be good for agencies and companies alike.”
Task order protest changes
Another proposal to close the gap between the Defense Department and civilian agencies would raise the threshold of task order bid protests to $35 million across the government. Currently, vendors can only protest task orders to the Government Accountability Office if the total award is $35 million or more, while for civilian agencies the threshold is $10 million.
“Standardizing the task and delivery order threshold would provide benefits without putting bidders at a competitive disadvantage. First, protest procedures at 41 U.S.C. 4106(f) will still allow interested parties to protest on the ground that the task or delivery order increases the scope, period or maximum value of the contract under which the order is issued. Secondly, 41 U.S.C. 4106(c) will still require agencies to ensure contractors are afforded a fair opportunity to be considered for the award of task and delivery orders,” the proposal states.
The administration also wants to change the bid protest regulations to expand a provision across all agencies where when an incumbent contractor protests a lost follow-on action, the agency withholds 5% of their payments during the protest period. And if the incumbent loses the protest, the agency keeps the money.
Congress gave DoD this authority in the Section 875 of the 2026 NDAA.
“While section 875 helps the Department of [Defense] combat meritless protests, the same problematic incentive structure for incumbents leveraging the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) stays also exists at civilian agencies. In response, this legislative proposal would provide parity across executive agencies. The proposed legislative text closely mirrors section 875 except it directs the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to update the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) — as opposed to requiring the Department of [Defense] to update its FAR supplement as required by section 875 — to ensure application across all agencies. Otherwise, this proposal would provide the same mechanism to discourage the strategic use of protests solely to extend existing contracts, while maintaining the integrity of the bid protest system for contractors with valid legal and factual challenges to agency procurement decisions,” the proposal states.
All of these changes, as well as the FAR overhaul, would require more training of acquisition workers. To that end, OMB is asking to increase to 7.5% from 5% the amount of money GSA can take from fees under the schedules or other governmentwide acquisition contracts for the Federal Acquisition Institute.
Beutel said these proposals go to the authorizing committees, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But he believes adding some of these to the defense policy bill is the best path to getting them across the finish line.
“If they wanted to get these codified, these also should’ve gone up to the Hill weeks ago,” he said. “It may be hard to get this through Congress because the House passed the NDAA already.”
Thomas added that of all the proposals, he believes the CSO one would garner the most support from lawmakers.
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