Senate After SBA Over Small Biz Contracts

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July 31, 2011 by Angela Shupe | 2 Comments

Late last month, I mentioned an article discussing SBA numbers evaluated by the American Small Business League showing that the SBA did not give small businesses as many contracts as originally claimed.

According to Entrepreneur, the senate is now taking a second look at the numbers released by the SBA and questioning their process.

At a hearing Tuesday, senators questioned the SBA over its claim that 22.7 percent of federal contract dollars went to small businesses in 2010. In an effort to make sure entrepreneurs can get in on government contract work, federal agencies aim to award at least 23 percent of those contracts to small businesses each year.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, said the SBA’s system for tracking and qualifying companies for small business contracts “doesn’t seem to make sense.” “We don’t need to be spending taxpayer dollars to prop up a system that allows the government to take credit and large businesses to profit at the expense of the small businesses that the system is meant to help,” she said.

McCaskill argued that a complicated framework of regulations makes it “virtually impossible” to track the number of federal contracts being awarded to small businesses. The Senate investigation claims several large companies abuse special exemptions to the SBA’s size standards while others hold small-business contracts although they no longer qualify as small businesses.