SBA Could Be Target in Government Reorganization The Obama administration’s government reorganization effort will focus on the dozen agencies involved in trade and export policy, likely including the Small Business Administration. President Obama announced the reorganization in his State of the Union address Jan. 25, but gave no details. “We live and do business in the Information Age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black-and-white TV,” he said. The White House later said trade and export agencies would be the first targets. Responsibility in that area is split among the Commerce Department, the U.S. Trade Representative, SBA, the Export-Import Bank and several smaller agencies. The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with close ties to the White House, issued a white paper in December focusing on the issue. It recommended folding Commerce, SBA and other agencies into a new Department of Business, Trade, and Technology. Any move to end SBA’s status as an independent agency is likely to hit a wall of opposition in Congress. Last fall the chairmen of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform proposed combining SBA and Commerce. The Center for American Progress said the proposal “launched a firestorm.” “We argue for its consideration, however, not principally for cost savings and efficiency but because the move would signal the importance of small business to the United States’ competitiveness agenda,” the center said in its report, “A Focus on Competitiveness.” “Including small business as a core department responsibility could elevate small business in national policy, even if there will no longer be an agency dedicated only to smaller firms,” the report said. “We have no illusions, however, that advocates for small business will see it this way.”