Bill Number Two: Nancy Mace's Skills-Based Contracting Bill Clears Congress 904 Days After She First Filed It, Two Years After It Failed on the House Floor, Her Second of 202 to Pass Both Chambers

Reporting credit: this dispatch builds on Nick Reynolds' report in The Post and Courier, "Nancy Mace passes second and likely final bill of career," published October 2, 2026. The legislative figures below come from the official Congress.gov record.

"This jobs bill will be a feather in my cap as I retire. It is a very big deal. It's probably the thing that I'm most proud of in my work in Congress before I retire."

That is Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC-01), speaking to reporters this week, as reported by The Post and Courier. On September 30, 2026, the Senate passed her bill, H.R. 5235, the Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act of 2025, by unanimous consent. It now goes to President Trump.

The numbers

The record	The number
Bills and resolutions Mace has sponsored since January 2021	202 (22 in the 117th Congress, 75 in the 118th, 105 in the 119th)
Of those, passed by both the House and the Senate	2
Signed into law	1 (a 2022 post office renaming); H.R. 5235 awaits the President
First filed, as H.R. 7887, the ACCESS Act	April 9, 2024 (118th Congress)
That version on the House floor	Failed, 178 to 234, July 23, 2024 (two-thirds needed under suspension)
Refiled as H.R. 5235	September 9, 2025, 413 days after the floor defeat
Passed the House	February 23, 2026 (voice vote), 167 days after filing
Passed the Senate	September 30, 2026 (unanimous consent), 219 days after the House
H.R. 5235, filing to final passage	386 days
Total, first filing to final passage	904 days (about two and a half years, across two Congresses)

All figures are from the Congress.gov record for Bioguide ID M000194, retrieved October 3, 2026. The 202 count covers bills and resolutions she sponsored; it excludes the 15 floor amendments she offered and the bills she cosponsored for other members.

The Post and Courier put it this way: "For years, Nancy Mace's opponents have criticized her for her lack of a legislative record in Congress, which includes getting passed just one bill, for renaming a post office on Hilton Head Island." That first bill, H.R. 6042, named the Caesar H. Wright Jr. Post Office Building and became Public Law 117-288 in December 2022. H.R. 5235 is the second. The paper called it her "second-ever, and likely final," bill to pass both chambers. Mace, as the paper notes, is leaving Congress at the end of this year following her unsuccessful bid for governor.

Where the idea started: the 2023 MACE Act

The skills-over-degrees push in Mace's record goes back further than this bill. On July 10, 2023, she introduced H.R. 4502, the Modernizing the Acquisition of Cybersecurity Experts Act, which shares her name as an acronym: the MACE Act. Its original cosponsor was Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA). It is a related but separate bill. It covers the federal government's own cybersecurity hiring (title 5 of the U.S. Code), barring agencies from setting minimum education requirements for those jobs unless the law requires them. H.R. 5235 covers federal contractors (title 41). The MACE Act passed the House 394 to 1 on October 2, 2023 (Roll Call 515), then went to the Senate and died there without a vote when the 118th Congress ended. Mace refiled it in August 2025 as H.R. 5000, the Cybersecurity Hiring Modernization Act. House Oversight approved that version 44 to 0 in February 2026, and as of this writing it has not had a floor vote.

The first try: the 2024 ACCESS Act

This was not the bill's first trip through the House. On April 9, 2024, Mace introduced H.R. 7887, the ACCESS Act ("Allowing Contractors to Choose Employees for Select Skills Act"), with the same Democratic original cosponsor, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi. Its official title is nearly identical to H.R. 5235's: "To amend title 41, United States Code, to prohibit minimum experience or educational requirements for proposed contractor personnel in certain contract solicitations." The 2025 version dropped the word "experience."

• April 9, 2024: introduced and referred to House Oversight.
• April 10, 2024: Oversight orders it reported, amended, 43 to 0.
• July 22, 2024: Mace moves to suspend the rules and pass it. After 40 minutes of debate, a recorded vote is demanded.
• July 23, 2024: The motion fails, 178 to 234 (Roll Call 380). Suspension requires a two-thirds majority. According to the House Clerk's tally, Republicans voted 178 to 35 in favor and Democrats voted 0 to 199.

A Senate companion with the same name, S. 4631, was filed by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) with Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) in July 2024 and reported out of committee in December 2024, but it never got a Senate floor vote, and the 118th Congress ended. Lankford and Peters refiled it in January 2025 as S. 79, which Congress.gov lists as related to H.R. 5235. Mace refiled her House version as H.R. 5235 on September 9, 2025, 413 days after the floor defeat. That is the version that passed.

The bill itself

Here is the bill as it passed the House and went to the Senate, the engrossed text printed by the Government Publishing Office. The Senate passed it without amendment, so this is the text that goes to the President.

H.R. 5235 (119th Congress), engrossed in the House, page 1. Source: GovInfo (GPO). The full six-page text is hosted here.

H.R. 5235, engrossed, page 2.

What it does, in the Post and Courier's summary: "federal contracts may no longer stipulate minimum educational requirements for individuals performing the work unless the contracting officer justifies the requirements in writing." Her office said in a statement that "these companies could have more flexibility to hire workers based on their skills and experience rather than unnecessary degree or credential requirements."

The paper traces the idea to a 2024 House Oversight hearing Mace led on the artificial intelligence workforce, where IBM executive Timi Hadra testified that "federal contractors are rarely able to place an individual without a four-year degree on a technology services contract, regardless of their qualifications."

How it got through

The record shows a bipartisan, low-friction path once it moved:

• September 9, 2025: Mace introduces H.R. 5235, with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) as an original cosponsor. Referred to House Oversight and Government Reform.
• December 2, 2025: Oversight orders it reported, amended, by a recorded vote of 44 to 0.
• December 16, 2025: Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) joins as a cosponsor.
• February 23, 2026: The House passes it under suspension of the rules by voice vote, on a motion by Rep. William Timmons (R-SC).
• February 24, 2026: Received in the Senate and referred to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
• August 6, 2026: The Senate committee orders it reported favorably, without amendment.
• September 14, 2026: Reported by Sen. Rand Paul and placed on the Senate calendar.
• September 30, 2026: The Senate passes it without amendment by unanimous consent.

Nobody recorded a vote against it at any stage.

In her own words

"You can talk to any federal contractor in town, and they'll tell you that this is going to be enormous for them because now they have a bigger resume pool that they can pull from."

"It's probably the thing that I'm most proud of in my work in Congress before I retire: the opportunity to give some guy or some gal a chance when someone told them 'no' because they didn't have a piece of paper."

Both quotes are as reported by The Post and Courier. The bill is real, it passed both chambers, and it is hers. So is the record around it: 202 measures sponsored, two through both chambers, and this one 904 days from its first filing to final passage, including a House floor defeat along the way. Readers can weigh both.

See every one of the 202 in The Legislative Record, and our earlier look at the numbers in One of 192.

Sources & related coverage

• The Post and Courier (Nick Reynolds), "Nancy Mace passes second and likely final bill of career," October 2, 2026
• Congress.gov, H.R. 5235 (119th Congress), Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act of 2025, all actions
• Congress.gov, H.R. 4502 (118th Congress), the MACE Act, all actions; FedScoop, "House passes bill to relax educational requirements for federal cyber workers"
• Congress.gov, H.R. 5000 (119th Congress), Cybersecurity Hiring Modernization Act
• Congress.gov, H.R. 7887 (118th Congress), the ACCESS Act, all actions
• Office of the House Clerk, Roll Call 380 (2024), H.R. 7887, failed 178 to 234
• Congress.gov, S. 79 (119th Congress), ACCESS Act (Lankford)
• GovInfo (GPO), H.R. 5235 engrossed in the House (PDF); our hosted copy
• Congress.gov, Nancy Mace sponsored legislation (Bioguide M000194)
• Congress.gov, H.R. 6042 (117th Congress), Public Law 117-288, the Hilton Head post office naming
• The Legislative Record hub · Congressional Career