The General Services Administration Cannot Agree with Its Inspector General on How to Price Multiple Award Schedule Contracts—Is Congress About to Resolve the Dispute?

Venable – Under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, awarding a contract under GSA's Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) is a competitive procedure—so long as the MAS program is producing the "lowest overall cost alternative." While GSA has attempted to modernize its approach to achieving this requirement, GSA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) stands by a decades-old approach—negotiating Most Favored Customer pricing and strictly enforcing the famous (or infamous) Price Reductions Clause—that contractors say creates risk and administrative costs that are ultimately borne by the taxpayer.