Petaluma, Calif. - On August 21st, the Obama Administration released its latest statistics on the volume of federal contracts awarded to small businesses. Federal law requires a minimum of 23 percent of the total value of all federal contracts to be awarded to small businesses. Federal statute defines a small business as being "independently owned," which excludes publicly traded firms.

The Obama Administration is claiming the government awarded $93.3 billion in contracts to small businesses or 21.5 percent during fiscal year (FY) 2008.

According to information from the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG), of the ten largest recipients of federal small business contracts, 85.4 percent of the contracts went to large businesses. Eight of the top ten recipients of small business contracts were large businesses.

The top recipient of government small business contracts was Textron, which received $775.7 million.  Textron is a Fortune 500 firm with 83,000 employees and over $25 billion in annual revenue.

Two other top ten recipients of federal small business contracts were Ssangyong Corporation, which is headquartered in Seoul, Korea and received over $254 million and Finmeccanica SpA, which is headquartered in Italy with 73,000 employees and received over $283 million in contracts.

The 14th largest recipient of federal small business contracts is listed as “Miscellaneous Foreign Contractors” with $210 million in government small business contracts.

Other firms included in the Obama Administration's small business data were Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, AT&T, 3M Corporation, Xerox, Dell Computer, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Staples, Office Depot, British Aerospace (BAE), Rolls-Royce and French firm Thales.

Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have found that legitimate small businesses have lost billions of dollars in federal small business contracts, which have been diverted to many of the largest firms around the world. In 2005, the SBA Inspector General referred to the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire federal government today."  (https://www.asbl.com/documents/05-15.pdf) 

In February of 2008, President Obama promised to halt the rampant abuses when he released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php)   

To date, President Obama has taken no actions to honor his campaign promise, and corporate giants continue to dominate government small business contracting programs.

The American Small Business League (ASBL) estimates that during the first six months of the Obama Administration, legitimate small businesses have lost over $50 billion in federal small business contracts to corporate giants. (www.asbl.com)