PETALUMA, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 7,2014) - According to the American Small Business League, an article in the Washington Post by J.D.Harrison has questioned the accuracy of the Small Business Administration's(SBA's) annual Scorecard data.

In a press conference at the NASAGoddard Space Flight Center, SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet announced for FY 2013,the federal government awarded 23.39 percent of federal contracts to smallbusinesses.

Federal law requires that a minimum of 23% of the total value ofall federal contracts be awarded to small businesses. 

For more than a decade the SBA has dramaticallyinflated the actual percentage of contracts to small businesses by includingbillions of dollars in contracts to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of largebusinesses around the world. CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN have all reported onthe diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms.

Another tactic used by the SBA tosignificantly misrepresent the actual percentageof federal contracts awarded to small businesses is to use a federalacquisition budget number that is dramatically lower than the actual federalacquisition budget.

Based on the latest data from the USgovernment spending website, for fiscal year2013, the government spent a total of $3.5 trillion. In calculating thepercentage of federal contracts awarded to small businesses the SBA used afederal acquisition budget number of just $355 billion or less than10% of what the total government spending was for that year.

A recent legal opinion by ProfessorCharles Tiefer, one of the nation's leading experts on federal contracting law,finds the acquisition budget number the SBA should be using to calculate thepercentage of awards to small businesses is closer to $1.1 trillion.

Professor Tiefer's legal opinion alsofinds no legal justification for the SBA's long standing policy of including billions of dollars in federalcontracts to large businesses in calculating the volume andpercentage of federal contracts awarded to small businesses.

Using Professor Tiefer's real federalacquisition budget number of $1.1 trillion, the $83.1 billion the SBA claimswas awarded to small businesses would be approximately 7.5% and not the 23.39%claimed by the SBA.

The latest data from the FederalProcurement Data System indicates in fiscal year 2013, 175 Fortune 500 firms andtheir subsidiaries received federal small business contracts.

Research by the American SmallBusiness League concludes if the actual federal acquisition budget were used asprescribed by law and if all firms that did not meet the current federaldefinition of a small business were excluded from the SBA's calculations,legitimate small businesses would have received less than 5% of federalcontracts in fiscal year 2013 and not the 23.39% claimed by the SBA.

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