The Davis-Bacon law discourages small businesses from bidding on public projects because of the difficulty of meeting the complex and archaic reporting rules it requires. And, because it requires the payment of inflated union-scale wages, most small businesses are often priced out of competition - leaving large, unionized firms to divvy up the work to be done under taxpayer funded federal construction contracts.

Davis-Bacon's requirement that workers be paid inflated wages increases the cost of completing federal construction projects. Davis-Bacon wage rates are an average of 22% higher than the standard wage rate in an area. The fact that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act required the payment of Davis-Bacon wages for all of the construction projects it funded will inflate the cost to taxpayers of completing these projects by $17 billion.

"The Davis-Bacon Act is nothing more than an out-dated, racially charged, Depression-era wage subsidy law that has no place in the 21st Century market," Brian Johnson, Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, said. "It is not the job of the ever-expanding federal government to dictate how much private sector businesses should pay their employees. Davis-Bacon wage rates increase the cost of every federally funded construction project by almost $9 billion and shift that burden onto the taxpaying American family. I applaud Representatives King and Mack for introducing this legislation."

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