The House Small Business Committee is urging Congress to cut off funding for Women’s Business Centers and other education, training and outreach programs at the Small Business Administration in fiscal 2015.

      “The SBA can save $50 million by cutting duplication and reallocating resources to proven initiatives rather than spending on costly and unproven SBA-created programs,” Rep. Sam Graves, R-MO, committee chair, wrote in a news release.

      The Republican-majority House panel targeted several areas of alleged SBA overlaps for funding reductions, including $39 million to be cut from existing and new entrepreneurial training programs and $14 million from outreach programs, according to its “Views and Estimates” advisory report submitted to the House Budget Committee.

      The programs slated for termination by the committee include Women’s Business Centers, “Boots to Business” veterans training, Entrepreneurship Education, Regional Innovation Clusters and HUBZone outreach, among others.

      The panel’s recommendations are purely advisory, and initial spending decisions for the SBA’s budget are to be made by the House Appropriations Committee. But the House small business panel’s advice--while unlikely to become law--does provide a window into the lawmakers’ priorities. And its recommendations already are meeting with controversy.

      For example, the House small business panel is getting pushback on its advice to shut down the SBA’s network of about 100 women’s centers. The panel contends the centers should get more private funding and are not providing value to women.

      “Many of the clients are not women but men,” the House report claims, adding that the women’s centers duplicate what is available from other SBA programs, including Small Business Development Centers and SCORE volunteer programs.

      But Ann Sullivan, chief advocate for the Women Impacting Public Policy advocacy group and for the Association of Women’s Business Centers, said the centers’ services are not duplicative as they are the only SBA resource required to serve socially- and economically-disadvantaged women. She said the centers are funded at $14.5 million annually.

      In fiscal 2013, the 106 women’s centers served 134,000 entrepreneurs, surpassing the SBA’s performance goal by 34%, Sullivan said: “We believe that Women’s Business Centers serve an important population.” Sullivan said.

      Furthermore, with 27 million small business owners in the United States and millions more who want to start their own companies, the existing SBA resources “are hardly adequate to service the demand,” Sullivan added.

      In addition to targeting women’s centers, the House panel advised closing down the SBA Office of Native American Affairs and the Office of International Trade. The lawmakers said similar services are provided by the Commerce Department.

      The SBA’s Veterans Business Outreach Centers would be transferred to Veterans Affairs Department, under the House panel’s plan.

      For the $2 million the SBA allocated for HUBZones, the House panel recommended that “to the extent such funds are used to perform outreach...then all such funds should be eliminated or transferred to oversight.”

      The House committee also advised terminating the SBA’s $3 million contribution to the government-wide BusinessUSA.gov website project. That money should be redirected to SBA programs for small business federal contractors, the panelists advised. The SBA spends about $102 million a year on small business federal contracting support.

      “Of the $3 million in savings from the SBA’s contribution to BusinessUSA.gov, about $1 million should be allocated to hiring new Procurement Center Representatives and Commercial Marketing Representatives,” the report said

      The House panelists want the remaining $2 million to go toward implementation of various regulations and changes to SBA contracting programs mandated by Congress in the last several years.

      The House committee members want the SBA to:

• issue new guidelines for agency small business contracting;
• file a report on why agencies have not met their contracting goals;
• promulgate regulations to improve the mentor-protege program;
• issue rules to permit more teaming by modifying subcontracting limitations;
• adjust databases to identify large businesses misclassified as small;
• establish regulations for safe harbor for small businesses who make a good faith effort to comply with size standard rules;
• issue a standard-operating procedure for suspension and debarment proceedings;
• issue a plain-English guide on how to comply with size standards;
• and issue regulations on authority to suspend or debar contractors; among others.

      “The SBA has not completed any of these enumerated tasks and some are more than a year overdue,” the report said.

      Overall, the president has asked for $710 million for the agency in fiscal 2015, down from $770 million enacted this fiscal year and a big drop from the $1 billion pre-sequestration allocation in fiscal 2013, according to the SBA. Most of the reduction was in loan subsidies, while still meeting forecasted loan demand.

      Under Congress’ rules, the House panel’s report has been forwarded to the House Budget Committee for consideration. Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee is expected to begin writing up the spending legislation for the SBA within several weeks.

More information: House small business committee report http://goo.gl/h3J839