From the Tacoma, Wash. Business Examiner Daily:
A California-based small business group is claiming that the president's claims about helping small businesses are patently false.
Due to omissions and number-juggling by the Small Business Administration, say officials of the American Small Business League, many large corporations were awarded contracts that should have gone to smaller companies, costing them billions of dollars and jobs that should have been theirs under SBA formulas.
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"America loses when the SBA cheats small business, which create most of our new jobs," said Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League. "The Bush Administration helped funnel billions in small-business contracts to big corporations last year, then cooked the books to claim that it met statutory small business goals."
The SBA, he says, artificially lowered the total dollar figure of awarded government contracts by excluding overseas contracts and military contracts, which went almost exclusively to larger corporations, significantly lowering the percentage of contracts that the SBA claims went to small companies. Under SBA formulas, small businesses should receive at least 23 percent of federal contracts.
Chapman also points to a study released last month by the Center for Public Integrity, which detailed the full extent of the problem related to Defense Department contracts and cites a 2003 Government Accountability Office investigation that confirmed billions of dollars in small business contracts improperly went to some of the nation's largest companies.
The SBA, meanwhile, points out that 2004 was a record-shattering year, providing more than twice as many loans to small businesses as in 2001. The agency also surpassed its previous lending records in both the flagship loan programs, and established volume records in loans to women, minorities, and veterans. In fiscal year 2004, the SBA backed nearly 75,000 loans totaling $12.5 billion to small businesses.
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