The Small Business Administration announced recently that our governmentjust missed their overall 23% goal of small businesscontracting. The SBA claims that 22.5% was devoted to small businesscontracting, which was an increase from last year's 21.54% in 2011. However,organizations like the American Small Business League claimthat these figures are fabricated, and millions of dollars are actually stillillegally being awarded to large corporations. Fact or fiction?

In a phone interview with Max K. Timko of GovernmentContractingTips.com, LloydChapman, President of the American Small Business League commented about thesefigures stating, "Federal law states that 23% of all government contractingdollars must be given to registered small business government contractorsaccording to the Small Business Act. The most recent data from the Federal ProcurementData System (FPDS) show that the federal government spent around $1.1 trillionon unclassified contracts. That means that small businesses should be receivingaround $253 billion. The SBA stated that $89.9 billion went to small businessesin 2012, which is 22.25 percent. Well that is just not true. When you look atFPDS, not what Lloyd Chapman (referring to oneself) says, it shows that some ofthe companies that received small business contracts were Fortune 500companies. Sears, Honeywell, IBM, HP, General Dynamics and Coke to name a fewdirectly out of FPDS. So when you look at the SBA's $89.8, of the top 100recipients of small business government contracts today 72% are currently largebusinesses. A small business must be independently owned, and not publiclytraded; not be dominate in their field, and have no NAICS codes with a maximumemployee standard more than 1,500."

Mr. Chapman continued to state, "If you look at the volume of contracts andexclude the Fortune 1000 companies and you will find that the real acquisitionbudget is around $1.1 trillion. Small businesses have received somewhere around5% and possibly no more than 3% of these small business contracts. So, for 2012small businesses were suppose to get somewhere around $250 billion but theyactually got less than $50 billion, which means they are short more than $200billion. It appears that this has been going on for more than a decade. So inmy viewpoint, people think that the SBA is there to help small businesses butis actually the most anti-small business organization out there." WhenGovernmentContractingTips.com tried to speak with someone over at the SBA therepresentative stated they did not have a comment on the subject.

The House of Small Business CommitteeChairman Sam Graves, quoted on the SBA's numbers stating, "The fact that thefederal government hasn't met this meager 23 percent small business contractinggoal for seven years is simply unacceptable, and further proof that ourgovernment continues to give lip service to small companies." A major part ofthe problem is that not enough small businesses are properly registered assmall business government contractors to take part in government contracting.Businesses large and small earn government contracts by becoming registered andbidding on contracts that fit their services. Every business must be registeredin System for Awards Management (SAM) inorder to be eligible for federal government contracts. Once a business isregistered properly, their business can start bidding on government contractson FBO.gov and view other solicitations on government agency databases. SAMregistration can often take a business owner/employee days or even weeks toregister. Only to have their registration rejected if a business's informationis entered incorrectly.

 Small Businesses for the pastthree years have been seeking out help with their registrations, turning tothird party registration firms like US Federal Contractor Registration fortheir professional guidance. Mr. Chapman went on to comment about this stating,"I do not see any problem with third party registration firms helping smallbusinesses become properly registered for government contracts. As long as youare registered properly you can do business with the government. When you tryto call government agencies to learn about government contracting they will tryto run you off the phone most of the time. They will try to say things likethey are not buying, we are under another contract or tell a business they musthave a GSA Schedule to do business with them. It is not true. Every governmentagency needs to quadruple the amount of contracts with small businesses. So anyfederal buyer you call should work with your business. Not one governmentagency is currently hitting their small business acquisition goal. Not a singlegovernment agency in Washington has ever hit their small business contractinggoal. Not one! Use any means to win these contracts and become properlyregistered. Third party registration firms are a good way to get started ingovernment contracting."

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