Figures showing the federal government is meeting its goals in funneling contracts to small businesses are faked, says the president of the American Small Business League of Petaluma.

He says the Obama Administration is dragging its feet in releasing contracting data so the numbers can be invented.

“They need all that time … to juggle the books,” Mr. Chapman says. “They’re going to hide the fact that most of these contracts go to large businesses. What it means to California is maybe $10-$12 billion a year in lost federal contracts and probably 400,000 jobs.”

Mr. Chapman says some government officials are fraudulently changing data to make the government look good in its contracting goals.

“They’ll take a small business that got maybe $1 million and add zeros to the end,” he says. “So they’ll go from $1 million to $10 million or a $100 million or even a billion,” he says. “And if anyone exposes that, they’ll say it’s a computer glitch.”

(Lloyd Chapman expands on his argument in a CVBT Audio Interview via Skype. Please left-click on the link below to listen now or right-click to download the MP3 audio file for later listening.)

Mr. Chapman says the fraudulent figures are still being reported despite widespread publicity – but no action or even interest by Congress.

“It is fraud,” he says flatly. “You’ve got fraud on the part of the federal contracting officials and on the part of large businesses.”

Mr. Chapman says the only way the federal government achieves its small business contracting goals is through manipulating the numbers.

He wrote a bill now sitting in a committee of the House of Representatives that would force clarity in contracting. It has picked up 12 co-sponsors, but also the opposition of the chairwoman of the House Committee on Small Business, Nydia Velasquez, D-N.Y., Mr. Chapman says.

He says it’s all about the money with members of Congress getting so much money from big business and big labor. Ms. Velasquez, for example, saw three dollars out of four for her re-election campaign last year coming from political action committees, according to opensecrets.org, which compiles figures about campaign financing.

“This issue defines politics in America today,” says Mr. Chapman. “It shows more about our government than any other issue I can think of.”

Source:  http://centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=12741