May 7, 2008
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May 6, 2008
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By Lloyd Chapman
May 1, 2008
By Ambrose Clancy
Long Island Business News
April 25, 2008
This week, the U.S Small Business Administration celebrated “National Small Business Week 2008” amidst foul cries from some members of the small biz community.
According to a 2000 law, the SBA must try to give 5 percent of all federal contracts to small, women-owned businesses. But Margot Dorfman, chief executive of the U.S. Women’s’ Chamber of Commerce, said both the SBA and the chamber agree that goal has not been met.
And Dorfman thinks the SBA’s decision to throw up roadblocks against women-owned businesses, comes straight from the Bush administration.
“I believe this administration, for whatever reason, does not feel it’s necessary to comply with the law,” she said.
Mike Stamler, the SBA’s chief press officer, explained that the law dictates that his organization tries to hit 5 percent. It’s only a goal.
“We’re enacting the law as best we can as Congress asked us to do,” he said.
Sole proprietor Cris Young, owner of Oceanside’s Hudson Fasteners, said that logic is dismissive and wanted answers to why the goals are not being achieved.
She said the SBA has had eight years to reach that goal.
“This is 2008 and the goals are not met,” Young said. “Isn’t that enough time to get this right?”
Another charge leveled at the SBA is large corporations are scoring federal contracts at the expense of small businesses. By law, a goal of 23 percent of federal contracts should go to small businesses. However, the so called “bundling” of contracts, whereby several contracts on one project are included in only one bid, results in small businesses being shut out.
For example, if a small business is contracted to do cleaning for the Internal Revenue Service and windows also have to be cleaned, a large company will come in and bid for both jobs, resulting in two small businesses shut out, said Molly Brogan, spokeswoman for the National Business Association.
“We have concerns and we have raised the issue,” Brogan said, while adding that “the SBA has improved their transparency significantly since previous years.”
Ron Roybal, owner of PRMS Electronic Systems in Islandia, said bundling is done for speed and efficiency, forgetting the concept of a level playing field for small businesses.
“It’s easier for federal agencies to get these bundled contracts awarded,” Roybal said.
The SBA is not to blame, Roybal added. “They do the best they can with the resources they have.”
Stamler agreed, adding that the SBA is constantly trying to identify bundling and that it must depend on other agencies to identify bundling as well.
A more nefarious practice is corporations using small businesses as “pass-throughs.” Jordan Kudler, president of Krest Office Products in Long Island City, explained that a corporation approaches a small business and asks them to be a front, or pass-through for them. The corporation “tells the small business that on any government orders, ‘We’ll pick them, wrap them, pack them and ship them,’” said Kudler. The pass-through does absolutely nothing and receives a percentage of the over-all contract.
“This undermines the true essence of what the federal government is trying to-do which is set aside business for small businesses,” Kudler said. “This is a criminal act and there needs to be a law against it.”
Spokesman Stamler said “pass-throughs are hard to spot. Where we find them we act on them.”
New certification rules to judge what business is truly a small entity have been put in place since June, Stamler said “There never was a big problem with large companies swooping in and taking contracts specifically meant for small businesses,” he said. “That’s a repetitive, incorrect interpretation that one hears.”
Stamler himself is fending off accusations from SBA critics that claim small business are getting stiff-armed out of contracts.
Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League and a long-time opponent of the SBA, under the Freedom of Information Act has asked for all of Stamler’s e-mail correspondence for 2006-2007 to prove his point.
“Stamler threatens people and I want to expose what he does every day of the week,” Chapman said, adding that the spokesman has slandered him and his organization, which exists to fight the SBA’s giving contracts intended for small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, on numerous occasions.
The SBA is in the process of reviewing “all the correspondence and will hand over what is appropriate,” Stamler said. On the hostility and threatening charges, he added, “You’re asking the wrong guy. Those are not my words. Consider the source.”
Ambrose Clancy can be reached at ambrose.clancy@libn.com.
Source: http://www.libn.com/article.htm?articleID=42133
April 24, 2008
Petaluma, Calif. - On Tuesday, President George W. Bush issued Proclamation 8241, which stated, "Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, and my Administration is committed to fostering an environment in which the entrepreneurial spirit can thrive." However, an examination of the Bush Administration's policies from the last seven years reveals a patchwork of anti-small business policies that have been instituted to the detriment of small businesses across the nation.
Since 2002, a series of federal investigations and private studies have all found that the Bush Administration has diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to some of the largest corporations in the United States, such as: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, L-3 Communications, Titan Industries, BAE and Raytheon. The story has been covered by virtually every major newspaper in the country (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=138) and by ABC, CBS and CNN.
The Bush Administration responded by issuing a press release and claiming that it was a myth that large businesses received federal small business contracts. (http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/news_07-30.pdf)
In Report 5-15, the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire Federal Government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards." (http://www.sba.gov/ig/05-15.pdf)
- Shortly after taking office, President Bush removed the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration from the President's Cabinet, and began to cut the SBA's budget and staffing. Today, the SBA's budget and staffing are approximately one half of what they were when the Bush Administration took office. In a private conversation, one SBA official acknowledged that the agency's budget and staffing has been cut to the point that it can no longer carry out its mission. (http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200511/sbabudget.html)
- Since 2000, the Bush Administration has refused to implement P.L. 106-554 to establish a 5 percent set-aside for women owned firms.
(http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS161911+04-Feb-2008+PRN20080204)
- In 2006, the Bush Administration was responsible for the closing of the SBA office specially designed to assist veteran owned small businesses in obtaining federal small business contracts. (http://www.targetgov.com/Content.asp?id=2313)
- The Bush Administration has consistently refused to release the names of the actual recipients of federal small business contracts. (http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3359565)
- In December of 2006, in the midst of a third investigative story by CBS into the actual recipients of small business contracts, Bush officials removed information from the government's Central Contractor Registration (CCR) database that would indicate whether a firm was small business or a large business. (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=537)
- On June 30, 2007, Bush officials adopted a policy that will allow Fortune 500 corporations to receive federal small business contracts through 2012. (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=577)
-The Bush Administration tried to misrepresent the actual recipients of federal small business contracts. (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=594)
- Regarding the diversion of federal small business contracts to large corporations during the Bush Administration, Larry Makinson, a senior fellow at the Center for Public Integrity stated, "A lot of the money that you would think is going to truly small businesses isn't." (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=38)
- David Drabkin, a senior procurement officer for the General Services Administration stated, "The numbers are inflated, we just don't know the extent." (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=403)
- SBA Spokeswoman, Sue Hensley stated, "This transition has led to the apparent diversion of contract dollars intended for small business." (https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=403)
The American Small Business League has won three federal lawsuits against the Bush Administration and forced the release of information that proved Fortune 500 corporations were the actual recipients of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts. The ASBL is currently suing the SBA to force the release of the actual recipients of federal small business contracts for 2006 and 2007. The ASBL projects that by the time President Bush leaves office more than $800 billion in federal small business contracts will have been diverted to large corporations.
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