Treasury Uses GSA Schedule to Support Financial Bailout

(MoneyWatch)  Neel Kashkari, the US Treasury's acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, made some remarks about how the Department plans to run the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP). This is the $700 B bill that Congress passed to help the government bring stability to the financial and credit markets. The Wall Street Journal published his prepared statement. One of the interesting things is that they are using the GSA Schedule to find the companies needed to manage the program.
Of interest is that the Department is using the GSA Schedule to hire the necessary accounting and management firms to conduct the various reviews and approval of company applications for funds under TARP. The GSA Schedule is a way for companies to advertise their capabilities and rates and US Government entities can just buy off of it directly. The Schedule provides hardware, equipment as well as services and allows companies to qualify which minimizes the amount of time in the contract process for an agency to purchase what they need. There are limits to how much business can be awarded or hardware bought this way.