The firestorm touched off by suggestions that the Small Business Administration should be abolished has drawn another major business group into the fray.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) said today that it had alerted its 100,000 members to put Congress on notice: "Trying to kill the SBA will be like trying to kill your political career."

The group joins the American Small Business League, which has been sounding the alarm over what it says is an effort by conservatives to kill the troubled agency and end government programs that aid small businesses.

The furor was touched off by a study published by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. It calls the SBA programs ineffective, and notes that only a fraction of small businesses take advantage of them.

At stake, however, according to Business League President Lloyd Chapman, is about $119 billion in federal contracts that are earmarked annually for small businesses.