Anne Leland
Information Research Specialist
The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the nation’s highest award for military valor.
It is presented by the President in the name of Congress and thus is often
called the Congressional Medal of Honor. Since its first presentation in
1863, 3,480 Medals of Honor have been awarded. In 1973, the Senate
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs issued a committee print, Vietnam Era Medal
of Honor Recipients 1964-72, followed by the committee print, Medal
of Honor Recipients: 1863-1978, in 1979. Both committee prints
list recipients and provide the full text of the citations describing
the actions that resulted in the awarding of the medal.
This report covers additions and changes to the list of recipients of the medal
since the release of the committee print. For further information, see CRS
Report 95-519, Medal
of Honor: History and Issues, by David F. Burrelli.
The official citations are not always consistent for all recipients. Some of
the citations do not contain information such as company, division, date
of birth, or place of birth. An asterisk (*) indicates those individuals
who were awarded their medal posthumously. This report will be updated as
new recipients are named.
Date of Report: November 8, 2013
Number of Pages: 51
Order Number: RL30011
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Ronald O'Rourke
Specialist in Naval Affairs
Moshe Schwartz
Specialist in Defense Acquisition
Multiyear procurement (MYP) and block buy contracting (BBC) are special
contracting mechanisms that Congress permits the Department of Defense
(DOD) to use for a limited number of defense acquisition programs.
Compared to the standard or default approach of annual contracting, MYP
and BBC have the potential for reducing weapon procurement costs by several percent.
Under annual contracting, DOD uses one or more contracts for each year’s worth
of procurement of a given kind of item. Under MYP, DOD instead uses a
single contract for two to five years’ worth of procurement of a given
kind of item without having to exercise a contract option for each year
after the first year. DOD needs congressional approval for each use of MYP.
There is a permanent statute governing MYP contracting—10 U.S.C. 2306b.
Under this statute, a program must meet several criteria to qualify for
MYP.
Compared with estimated costs under annual contracting, estimated savings for
programs being proposed for MYP have ranged from less than 5% to more than
15%, depending on the particulars of the program in question, with many
estimates falling in the range of 5% to 10%. In practice, actual savings
from using MYP rather than annual contracting can be difficult to observe or
verify because of cost growth during the execution of the contract due to
changes in the program independent of the use of MYP rather than annual
contracting.
BBC is similar to MYP in that it permits DOD to use a single contract for more
than one year’s worth of procurement of a given kind of item without
having to exercise a contract option for each year after the first year.
BBC is also similar to MYP in that DOD needs congressional approval for
each use of BBC. BBC differs from MYP in the following ways:
• There is no permanent statute governing the use of BBC.
• There is no requirement that BBC be approved in both a DOD appropriations act and
an act other than a DOD appropriations act.
• Programs being considered for BBC do not need to meet any legal criteria to qualify
for BBC, because there is no permanent statute governing the use of BBC that
establishes such criteria.
• A BBC contract can cover more than five years of planned procurements.
• Economic order quantity (EOQ) authority—the authority to bring forward selected
key components of the items to be procured under the contract and purchase
the components in batch form during the first year or two of the contract—does
not come automatically as part of BBC authority because there is no
permanent statute governing the use of BBC that includes EOQ authority as an
automatic feature.
• BBC contracts are less likely to include cancellation penalties.
Potential issues for Congress concerning MYP and BBC include the potential
impact of the current continuing resolution (CR) and sequestration on DOD’s
use of MYP and BBC; whether to use MYP and BBC in the future more
frequently, less frequently, or about as frequently as they are currently
used; and whether to create a permanent statute to govern the use of BBC, analogous
to the permanent statute that governs the use of MYP.
Date of Report: October 29, 2013
Number of Pages: 29
Order Number: R41909
Price: $29.95
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