Set-Aside Alert news analysis:

Why not a 25% small biz goal?

GOP dropped effort to raise goal; will it be revived?

      Republican House lawmakers led the effort in recent years to raise the government’s small business goal to 25%, from 23%.

      But in 2017, when Republicans dominated Congress and a GOP President took office, nothing happened. Is the effort dead or will it be revived?

Recent history

      The GOP-led House most recently voted to raise the goal in 2014 in a bill sponsored by Rep. Sam Graves, R-MO, then-chair of the House Small Business Committee.

      The year before, the Republican majority in the House spearheaded the drive to raise the goal to 25% in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal 2013, but it was not in the Senate version.

2017 inaction

      In 2017, when GOP President Donald Trump took office and Republicans dominated the House and Senate, there appeared to be an opportunity for the GOP to achieve its aim of raising the goal. But nothing happened.

      In May 2017, Democratic Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon submitted legislation to raise the goal to 25% to the House Small Business Committee, but the committee took no action. The bill, HR 2362, has three Democratic cosponsors.

Partisan disagreements

      Partisan squabbling over the goal has been a factor in interpreting goal achievement in recent years.

      President Obama’s administration achieved the 23% goal for small business procurement for four years in a row, starting in fiscal 2014. At the time, Rep. Steve Chabot, R-OH, chair of the House Small Business Committee, responded by suggesting the SBA was “robbing small businesses” by dramatically inflating the numbers. Chabot objected to SBA’s accounting methods.

      Studies by Set-Aside Alert have shown that inflation is possible in goal achievement, primarily due to the legal ability of companies to remain as “small” for a time after being purchased by large firms. The 2018 NDAA attempts to address that (see story on page 1).

     The small business goal may be prone to being manipulated by partisans on both sides. When a Democratic president was in office, GOP leaders continuously drew attention to the goal. Now that a GOP president is office, Democrats appear to be taking over the effort.

      Will Chabot support efforts to increase the goal in 2018? His office did not respond to a request by press time.

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Why not a 25% small biz goal?

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