On Monday July 29, the Washington Post published a story titled, “Small Business Contracting Numbers Inflated by Errors and Exclusions, Data Shows.”

The Washington Post was aware of numerous federal investigations that show a decade’s worth of fraud in the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) contracting programs. The documents provided to the Washington Post by the American Small Business League (ASBL) clearly indicate the rampant diversion of hundreds of billions in federal small business contracts to many of the largest firms in the world is willful and intentional and not “Errors and Exclusions” or “mistakes” as a 2008 Washington Post story stated.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the SBA and released Report GAO-10-108. It 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.”

In Report 5-15, the SBA Office of Inspector General (SBA OIG) named the diversion of federal small business contracts to large businesses as “one of the most important challenges” at the SBA for the last nine consecutive years and yet the SBA has refused to take any action to end the fraud and abuse.

The Washington Post failed to mention that in 2008, President Obama released the statement, “It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.”

The Washington Post failed to mention that in 2007 the SBA released a press release titled, “Myth vs. Fact” that claimed it was a myth that large businesses received federal small business contracts.

In 2005, the SBA OIG issued Report 5-14 that found the SBA was counting awards to corporate giants as small business awards and stated, “The SBA awarded four of the six high dollar procurements, reported as small business procurements, to large companies at the time of the procurements.”

The report goes on to say, “If the SBA had put as much effort into verifying whether the company currently met the awards size standard as it put into trying to earn credit toward its small business goals, then perhaps the contract action would have been awarded to a company that was legitimately small at the time of the award.”

“Errors and Exclusions” and “Mistakes” would be random. Numerous federal investigations have found the alleged “errors” always divert small business contracts to corporate giants, never the other way around; large business contracts don’t erroneously end up in hands of small businesses.

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.

The Washington Post refused to report that numerous federal investigations found the rampant fraud and abuse in federal small business contracting programs is clearly intentional and not the result of random “Errors and Exclusions.”

For the latest video from the ASBL, click here.