The Senate small business committee plans to launch "aggressive" oversight hearings into the Small Business Administration when Democrats take over Congress in January.

Incoming Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said the committee will first examine the SBA's new policy on contracting, which has been widely criticized since it was announced earlier this month.

Frequent SBA critic Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League, says the policy only requires companies to certify their small business status every five years, even though the SBA's own inspector general called for annual certification.

At stake are 23 percent of all federal contracts, which by law must be awarded to small businesses each year. Some $12 billion in contracts earmarked for small businesses last year actually went to large companies, such as Wal-Mart and Microsoft, according to congressional Democrats.