Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Karen Mills resigned more than six months ago and President Obama has not even mentioned her replacement. SBA Inspector General Peg Gustafson would be the most logical choice to replace the departing administrator.

Ever since Mills took the helm of the SBA, the agency has been plagued by rampant fraud and abuse in virtually every SBA administered program. Every year SBA Administrator, Karen Mills ran the agency, the SBA Office of Inspector General (SBA OIG) named the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as, “One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today.” Mills has consistently refused to take any action to stop the rampant fraud that has dogged the agency.

In the “Spring 2013 Semi-Annual Report to Congress” SBA Inspector General Gustafson stated that there were fraudulent schemes affecting all SBA programs.

Not only has Mills failed to address the rampant fraud in SBA managed programs, the problems have become much worse under Mills’ mismanagement. According to the latest data from the Federal Procurement Data System, of the top 100 recipients of federal small business contracts, 71 are currently large businesses.

Some of the firms the Karen Mills mismanaged SBA included in their small business contracting data included, IBM, Honeywell, Dell, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Rolls Royce, British Aerospace, AT&T, Verizon and Oracle.

ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN have all released investigative reports on the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants. On July 29, the Washington Post published a story that found, under Mills’ leadership, the SBA had shortchanged small businesses out of billions of dollars in federal contracts by diverting federal small business contracts to large businesses. They also found the SBA had intentionally inflated the percentage of awards to small businesses by under reporting the actual federal acquisition budget by over $100 billion dollars.

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated an SBA managed program under Mills’ leadership and released Report 10-108 that stated, “By failing to hold firms accountable the SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud.”

No individual in the country is more knowledgeable and qualified to clean up the wide spread fraud and abuse that transpired at the SBA under Karen Mills’ leadership than the very individual that has consistently uncovered and reported on the fraud and abuses, SBA Inspector General Peg Gustafson.

Under Peg Gustafson’s leadership the SBA could finally provide the guidance and assistance to American small businesses Congress intended.

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