Today it was announced the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers for last month were lower than originally estimated. Home sales and consumer confidence are down, and unemployment claims are up. Many of the world's top economists are now acknowledging that a double dip recession is a distinct possibility.

Despite President Obama's claims that the nation will avoid a double dip recession, it's hard to argue with the numbers, and they are not encouraging.

There is hope for the nation's economy in a little known bill titled the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act, H.R. 2568. Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson (GA - D) introduced H.R. 2568. The bill currently has 26 co-sponsors, including Joint Economic Committee (JEC) Chair, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D - NY).

H.R. 2568 is just seven and a half pages long. The heart of the bill is one sentence that would put more money into the middle class economy than any bill or stimulus program discussed to date. H.R. 2568 simply states the federal government can no longer give federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms, and thousands of other large businesses in the United States and Europe.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Wouldn't 99.9 percent of all Americans agree the government should not be giving federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms?
Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have found many of the largest firms in the world have received U.S. government small business funds. ABC, CBS and CNN have covered the story. (ABC, https://www.asbl.com/abc_evening_news.wmv; CBS, https://www.asbl.com/cbs.wmv; CNN, https://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=1170)

Some of the corporate giants in America that have received billions of dollars in federal small business contracts include Bechtel, Xerox, Dell Computer, John Deere, Boeing, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, Raytheon, L-3 Communications, General Dynamics and Titan Industries. According to the most recent data released by the Obama Administration, the largest recipient of federal small business contracts in fiscal year (FY) 2008 was Textron. Textron is a Fortune 500 defense contractor with 43,000 employees and over $14 billion in annual sales. Textron received over $775 million in federal small business contracts in a single year.

The diversion of federal small business funds to corporate giants is not limited to those companies in the United States. Other firms that received federal small business contracts included Rolls-Royce, British Aerospace (BAE), French firm Thales Communications, Ssangyong Corporation headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and Finmeccanica SpA, which is located in Italy and has 73,000 employees.

H.R. 2568 is a free and easy way to create jobs with no new spending and no new taxes. The bill is deficit neutral and will solve a federal contracting scandal that has gone on for more than a decade. H.R. 2568 would even allow President Obama to keep a campaign promise he made when he released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php)

H.R. 2568 could redirect over $100 billion a year in existing federal infrastructure spending into the hands of the nation's 27 million small businesses. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses create over 97 percent of all net new jobs in America. (http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200708/data.html) A report by the Kaufman Foundation found that firms that are less than five years old create nearly 100 percent of net new jobs.

I know President Obama has some of the nation's top economic advisers, but so far their ideas do not seem to be working. Let's see if we can't figure this out, and come up with some new ideas. 1. Small businesses create virtually all the net new jobs in America. 2. Over 12 federal investigations found the federal government is giving billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to many of the largest firms in the world. 3. The government needs to create jobs to stop the nation's economy from sliding over the edge into a double dip recession. Ohhh, I think I have a crazy idea that we haven't tried. Why don't we try not giving billions of dollars a week in federal small business contracts to some of the biggest companies in the world? I know it's a wild and wacky idea, but what have we got to lose.

Let's just say this, there is no downside to passing H.R. 2568. Compare H.R. 2568 to President Obama's $30 billion small business lending bill; what do you think will create more jobs? A one time shot of $30 billion in loans to small business, or over $100 billion a year in federal contracts every year, year-after-year.

Petaluma, Calif. – President Barack Obama is refusing to back a bill that could create millions of jobs in the private sector. The bill, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act, H.R.2568, was  introduced by Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson last May. The American Small Business League (ASBL) wrote the original draft of H.R. 2568. The bill is designed to stop the federal government from diverting over $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and many of the largest businesses in Europe.
 
Since 2003, a series of federal investigations have found billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts have been diverted to firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Bechtel, Dell Computer and Xerox. Corporate giants from around the world that have received U.S. government small business contracts include Rolls-Royce, British Aerospace (BAE), French giant Thales Communications, Ssangyong Corporation headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and Finmeccanica SpA, which is located in Italy and has 73,000 employees.  A recent investigation by Stars and Stripes Magazine found the federal government had awarded over $41.6 billion in small business contracts to “miscellaneous foreign contractors.” (http://www.stripes.com/blogs/ombudsman/ombudsman-1.8931/behind-the-media-contractors-veil-1.110840)  
 
H.R. 2568 would stop the federal government from reporting contract awards to publicly traded firms and foreign owned companies as small business awards. The bill is based on language in the Small Business Act, which states that a small business must be “independently owned” in order to receive federal small business contracts.
 
If President Obama were to sign H.R. 2568 into law, or pass by executive order, over $100 billion in existing federal infrastructure spending would be redirected to legitimate small businesses in the private sector. Since the bill requires no new spending or tax increases, it is deficit neutral. The Obama Administration had estimated that for every billion dollars in infrastructure spending, 40,000 new jobs would be created. Based on those projections, if H.R. 2568 were to become law, over four million new jobs could be created. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07radio.html?hp)  
 
The ASBL points to H.R. 2568 as being far superior to the Obama Administration’s $30 billion small business lending bill. As opposed to a one-time infusion of $30 billion in loans, H.R. 2568 would inject over $100 billion a year in federal contracts into the small business economy for decades to come.

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Any day now the Obama administration will release the latest federal data on the volume of government contracts that were awarded to small businesses. Federal law requires a minimum of 23 percent of all federal contracts to be awarded to small businesses. I'm betting the "Change We Can Believe In" Obama administration will completely falsify the actual percentage of government contracts that were awarded to legitimate small businesses.

Despite all his rhetoric and pandering to small businesses, the latest government small-business contracting data will prove President Obama is just another "business as usual" politician who is willing to say or do anything to get elected with no intention of honoring campaign promises. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to politics, but however you slice it, the Obama administration has failed to honor its promises to the small business community. In June, the American Small Business League (ASBL) released an analysis of the Obama administration's poor small business track record.

I am predicting that the actual volume of federal contracts the government will claim to have awarded to small businesses during fiscal year (FY) 2009 will be grossly misrepresented. The data will prove that President Obama's promise to end the diversion of billions of dollars a year in federal small-business contracts to corporate giants was empty. The Obama administration's neglect of this issue during its tenure has cheated the nation's 27 million small businesses out of billions of dollars in federal funds that by law should be allocated to small businesses. I predict the following regarding the release, and the immediate fallout after the release of the Obama administration's FY 2009 small-business contracting data:

1. To avoid scrutiny from the media, the data will be released late on a Friday in the next several weeks.
2. There will be no mainstream media coverage of the release of the data. The largest federal program to direct federal infrastructure spending to the private sector will go unreported. The intentional diversion of more than $100 billion in federal small business funds to large businesses around the world will go largely unreported by the mainstream media. You will not see this story on ABC, CBS or NBC. You won't see it in the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
3. The Obama administration will claim to have just missed its congressionally mandated 23-percent goal. Administration officials will claim to have awarded just over 22 percent of the government's purchases to small businesses. In reality, less than 5 percent of government contracts will have actually gone to legitimate small businesses.
4. The government's FY 2009 small-business contracting data will be falsified in several ways. First: Obama administration officials will claim the federal acquisition budget is less than half of what it actually is. The real federal acquisition budget for foreign, domestic, classified and unclassified acquisitions is nearly $1 trillion. Second: Thousands of large businesses, Fortune 500 firms and foreign-owned corporations will be included in the Obama administration's small business data. Billions of dollars in contracts awarded to U.S. based large businesses will be hidden under the categories "miscellaneous foreign contractors" and "classified domestic contractors."
5. If any attention is brought to fact that thousands of large businesses are included in the data, officials at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will claim it is the result of "miscoding," "computer glitches," and "simple human error."
6. No journalist will ask any Obama administration official why the alleged "random errors" always report awards to large businesses as small-business contracts and never the other way around. No journalist will ask why the one field that indicates if a firm is small or large has an error rate thousands of times higher than any other field in the database. No journalist will ask why there are so many errors in the data, even after the government spent nearly a year analyzing the data before its release.
7. No White House Correspondent will ever ask President Obama why his administration is diverting federal small-business contracts to large businesses, despite his campaign promise to, "end the diversion of federal small-business contracts to corporate giants."
8. No member of Congress will complain about the fact that the Obama administration is diverting federal small business funds to large businesses.
9. The release of the fabricated small business data will not prompt any member of Congress to call for the immediate passage of H.R. 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act. The bill would halt the yearly diversion of over $100 billion in federal small-business contracts to large businesses, and redirect those funds to the private sector firms that create a majority of net new jobs in America.
10. No group claiming to represent the interests of American small businesses (other than the ASBL) will be critical of the Obama Administration for diverting small business funds to large businesses, and falsifying compliance with the government's 23 percent small-business contracting goal.

The ASBL projects that over the last decade this fraud and abuse has diverted more than a trillion dollars away from the middle class. Unless the mainstream media starts making this issue a priority, another trillion dollars in small-business contracts will flow into the hands of large businesses over the next decade.