The SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration) has announced that they will be holding public meetings to review small business size standards.
The meetings will be held on June 3rd, in Washington D.C. naturally, but the meeting wasn't announced until this past Tuesday, May 27th according to the American Small Business League (ASBL), who seems to constantly be at odds with the SBA.
In a press release, the ASBL claims:
SBA critics believe the extreme short notice of the meetings is no accident, and was designed to make it more difficult for firms and organizations outside of the Washington D.C. area to be in attendance. Notice of such meetings is normally given months in advance. With such short notice, the input from the meetings will be dominated by subsidiaries of Fortune 1000 firms and large firms in the D.C. area that currently receive a major portion of all federal small business contracts. Lobbyists and trade groups that support large businesses in the IT industry are also expected to attend.
Since 2002, a series of federal investigations have found that the Bush Administration has inflated the government's small business contracting data by including billions of dollars in awards to Fortune 1000 firms and other large businesses. SBA critics expect the meetings to result in new higher small business size standards that allow larger firms to continue to receive the lion's share of federal small business contracts.
Is this the SBA's true agenda?
Size standards will apparently be discussed within the context of two groups - one based on the numbers from yearly receipts and one based on the number of employees.
Do you agree with the ASBL about the SBA's intentions or is it only political spin?
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SBA
I have gone to the SBA many times and I have worked to gain a loan on two separate occasions but I have always been turned down. Of course who wants to support a one to five person shop when you can support a business that has up to 500 employees? The SBA has helped me put together my proposals and SCORE working out of their office helped me with questions as they arose but never was there any money coming from the SBA. I was successful in obtaining bank loans each time but the SBA always had a reason they couldn't provide a loan to me. One was, we are allocated money based on need. As a white man your need isn't as critical as say a woman of color. I went around this by having my wife, a Mexican American, apply. Of course she didn't qualify but there is always a reason. The last time was they had already allotted all of the money so no new applications were being accepted. I returned at the beginning of the next year and of course I did not qualify. During this time I continued to struggle to build my business and today, no thanks to the SBA, my wife and I have a good business. We aren't getting rich but our mortgage is being paid and we take a trip or two each year. Oh yeah, we still don't have any employees but we do help support Five other small businesses.
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