Williams claims minority-only opportunities “unfair” to others

HSBC chair: Other small biz’s share “same challenges”

      Rep. Roger Williams, R-TX, published one of his first statements as the new chairman of the House Small Business Committee with a claim that expanding contracting opportunities for “only minority-owned” small businesses is unfair to other small firms.

      “Democratic efforts focusing primarily on increasing contracting opportunities for only minority-owned small businesses unfairly isolate all other small businesses who also share in the same challenges as minority-owned small businesses and could also benefit from such proposals,” according to a statement on “Key Priorities” issued by Williams on the committee website.

      Williams appeared to be referring to several of President Joe Biden’s initiatives, including raising the Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) contracting goal to 15% by 2025, up from 5% in fiscal 2020. In fiscal 2021, the latest official data, agencies achieved 11% in SDB procurements.

      A large share of such SDB procurements is composed of awards to participants in the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development program, which has a presumption of disadvantage for owners in certain racial and ethnic groups, including Native, Black and Hispanic Americans.

      Congress established that presumption decades ago to address longstanding underrepresentation of those groups in federal contracts. Courts have supported it, although it currently faces a challenge in court (See Jan. 20, 2023 edition of Set-Aside Alert).

      In the same statement, Williams also threatened to stop any expansion of small business procurement goals until errors in small business procurement data are corrected.

      “Democrats have engaged in a misguided push toward increasing contracting dollars toward small businesses without contemplating current deficiencies in the way dollars are counted,” Williams wrote.

      “Inaccuracies in dollars reported continue to persist which must be rectified before any mandated expansion of dollars flowing to small businesses will be useful,” the statement said.

      Williams set three goals for addressing the “Top Priority” issues in small business federal contracting:

• Ensure accuracy and accountability in small business procurement reporting;
• Protect prime and subcontracting opportunities for small firms against losses from bundling and contract consolidation;
• Increase oversight over the SBA’s management of contracting programs.

More Information:
HSBC Issue Statement: https://bit.ly/3XplAid

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