Value Over Cost Act of 2026

Enumerated powers · passes

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 services. Regulating GSA schedules is internal housekeeping within enumerated federal power, not a claim of new substantive power over states or individuals.

Bill of Rights · passes

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 Rights interest is implicated.

Individual liberty · passes

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.

Decentralization · passes

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 discretion within existing federal procurement.

Due process and takings · passes

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 compensation.