Bipartisan Attacks on SBA Budget Cuts The Republican chair and the senior Democrat on the Senate Small Business Committee denounced the Bush administration’s proposed cuts in SBA’s 2006 budget. Pointing to budget reductions in every year since President Bush took office, Chair Olympia Snowe (R-ME) declared, “There is no doubt that the time has come to end these unwarranted cuts.” The ranking Democrat, Sen. John Kerry (MA), said, “The president’s rhetoric on small business doesn’t square with this crippling budget proposal.” SBA Administrator Hector Barreto defended the budget before the committee Feb. 17, saying he is proud of the agency’s ability “to do more with less.” “We are training more people. We’re making more loans. We’re doing more contracting…We’re doing more in every area,” he said. Since 2001 SBA’s appropriation has shrunk by more than one-third to $610 million in the current fiscal year. The president proposed spending $593 million next year. But many of the proposed cuts have been rejected by Congress before, including the proposals to kill the Microloan program and to end support for women’s business centers that have been open more than five years. Barreto said many major metropolitan areas still do not have women’s business centers; Los Angeles got one only last year. “We want to grown new women’s business centers around the country,” he testified. A majority of the 104 existing centers would lose federal funding under the administration proposal, and advocates say at least some of them would be forced to close. Barreto declared, “The original purpose of the program was to be a five-year program,” with centers developing alternative sources of funding to keep going. In testimony before the committee, Terry Neese, president of Women Impacting Public Policy, urged Congress to continue the current formula that devotes 48% of federal funds to existing centers and 52% to open new ones. “Women’s business centers provide essential services to women, especially socially and economically disadvantaged women who need a comprehensive support system in order to succeed in starting a business,” she said. The administration proposed adding six new procurement center representatives, the officials charged with fighting unnecessary bundling and encouraging set-asides, bringing the total number of PCRs to about 55. Snowe said such a small number, covering 250 major contracting offices, “will not adequately police contract bundling.” (Set-Aside Alert mistakenly reported Feb. 18 that the proposed budget included no additional PCRs. We regret the error.) SBA plans to convert the PCRs into “electronic PCRs” who use technology to monitor contracting offices they cannot visit regularly.