Petaluma, Calif. - Tonight, President Obama will propose a new jobs program in the midst of a weak and uncertain economy. The American Small Business League (ASBL) predicts that the President will ignore the nation’s chief job creators, its 28 million small business, and continue to divert infrastructure spending to large businesses.

Since 2003, a series of federal investigations have found that the majority of federal small business contracts go to some of the largest companies in the U.S. and Europe. The Obama Administration’s small business contracting data over the past two years indicates that companies like General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Finmeccanica in Italy, British Aerospace (BAE) in the U.K, and Thales in France, all received small business contracts.

The federal government has a congressionally mandated 23 percent small business contracting goal, as established in the Small Business Act of 1953. That bill established the Small Business Administration (SBA) and a national network of small business liaisons, as well as reporting goals for agencies and prime contractors, all to ensure that a fair portion of federal contracts are awarded to small businesses.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, small businesses create 90 percent of net new jobs in America. Small businesses are responsible for half of GDP, employ more than half of the private sector workforce and produce 90 percent of all U.S. exports. Small businesses also create thirteen times more patents per employee than large businesses.

During the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama stated, “Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.” Yet in the Obama Administration’s 2010 contracting data, 61 of the top 100 small business contractors were actually large businesses.

The ASBL estimates that ending this decade-long contracting abuse would redirect as much as $200 billion a year in federal infrastructure spending to the middle class. This will create more jobs than any economic policies the Obama Administration has ever proposed.

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