Obama Ignores Small Business in State of the Union

Press Release

Obama Ignores Small Business in State of the Union

October 9, 8400

Tuesday President Barack Obama delivered his third State of the Union address to an economically strained nation. At a time when the U.S. economy is in need of sweeping reforms, the President failed to mention rampant government contracting abuse that is costing the middle class upwards of $100 billion annually.

Despite promising in 2008 to end federal small business contracting abuse, some of the largest companies in the world turn up in the Obama administration's own federal contracting data. In fact, during FY 2009 and 2010 at least 60 of the top 100 companies that received federal small business contracts were actually large businesses.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, small businesses create more than 90 percent of net new jobs. 98 percent of U.S. companies have less than 100 employees. Small businesses are suffering from a lack of demand, and yet President Obama refuses to acknowledge that large corporations hijack federal small business contracts.

Since 2003, a series of more than a dozen federal investigations have uncovered hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud, abuse, loopholes and lack of oversight of federal small business contracting programs. Moreover, the Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General (SBAOIG) has reported for seven consecutive years that a top challenge at the SBA is that agencies award federal small business contracts to large businesses.

The American Small Business League (ASBL) remains unsatisfied with President Obama and his complete failure to address the longstanding and well-documented abuse of federal small business contracting programs.

In addition to ignoring contracting abuse, President Obama has proposed to officially end the Pentagon's minority-owned small business contracting program, as well as close the SBA by combining it with the Department of Commerce.

"As President Obama is reading his speech, I would like to see a ticker on the bottom of the screen that mentions all of his anti-small business policies," said ASBL President Lloyd Chapman. "Barack Obama is giving billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts to some of the biggest companies worldwide and the middle class is paying for it."

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