Value Over Cost Act of 2026

SI-generated grade · five published checks · not individually reviewed by a person · methodology

Routine internal federal procurement reform within Congress's spending and Necessary and Proper powers. It infringes no rights, restricts no individual liberty, takes no property, and centralizes nothing beyond the Federal Government buying for itself.

• ✓ Passes · Enumerated powers
  Congress has explicit authority to manage federal property and spending and to make laws necessary to execute federal powers. Authority rests on Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 for providing for the common Defence and general Welfare through procurement spending, and Article I, Section 8, Clause 18, the Necessary and Proper Clause, to prescribe how executive agencies buy commercial supplies and ser…
• ✓ Passes · Bill of Rights
  The bill does not restrict speech, religion, press, assembly, arms, searches, trial rights, or other protections in the first ten Amendments. It changes only the evaluation standard for General Services Administration multiple-award contracts from lowest cost to best value when in the best interests of the federal government. No First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, or other Bill of…
• ✓ Passes · Individual sovereignty
  The bill restricts no personal conduct involving person, property, speech, labor, or belief. It directs how the government evaluates its own contract offers. Private vendors remain free to bid or not bid, and no citizen must speak, refrain from speaking, or surrender property or labor. No individual-sovereignty justification is required because no individual liberty is burdened.
• ✓ Passes · Decentralization
  This concerns the Federal Government's own purchasing process. Individuals, counties, and states cannot conduct federal agency procurement for commercial supplies and services. The minimum necessary level is federal because the buyer is the Federal Government itself. The bill does not transfer state, local, or private decisions upward and does not violate the Tenth Amendment; it only gives GSA dis…
• ✓ Passes · Due process and takings
  No deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process under the Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, no presumption-of-innocence violation, and no taking under the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause. Contractors remain subject to competitive procedures with notice and award standards; unsuccessful offerors lose no vested property right, and no property is seized without just compensati…

Sources: Congress.gov: HR 1118 summary