Canceled Federal Hearing on SBA Case Prompts Protest in San Francisco

"This case presents one of the small business community's major grievances," said Professor Tiefer after being notified the hearing had been canceled. "Advocates for small business have a right to be heard about how the share of small business in government contracts has been wrongly held down."

The American Small Business League (ASBL) is seeking a federal injunction against the SBA to halt two illegal policies that have shortchanged legitimate small businesses out of over $2 trillion dollars in federal contracts over the last ten years.

Dozens of ASBL supporters representing minority, woman and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses planned on attending the hearing.  Upon being notified that the hearing was canceled, several groups decided to stage a protest in front of the San Francisco Federal Courthouse. Enraged by the rampant abuses uncovered in federal small business contracting programs, they want to bring this issue to the attention of the national media.

Federal law mandates small businesses receive a minimum of 23% of all federal contracts. Within that goal are separate goals for small businesses owned by women, minorities and service-disabled veterans.

The ASBL is seeking to stop the SBA's longstanding policy of falsifying the federal government's compliance with the 23% small business contracting goals by excluding the majority of the total federal acquisition budget from those calculations. The Congressional Budget Office reported an acquisition budget of $1.2 trillion in 2015, which would mean small businesses are legally entitled to a minimum of $276 billion. In 2015, the SBA only used an acquisition budget of $370 billion, (a major decline from $1.2 trillion) thus inflating their numbers and falsifying their claim that small businesses received 24.9% of all federal contracts in 2015.

The ASBL estimates that as opposed to the $276 billion legitimate small businesses should have received in 2015, they likely received between $35 to $40 billion or just 3% of all federal contracts.

In addition, the ASBL seeks to stop the SBA from diverting billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries.  

A Government Accountability Office investigation uncovered the SBA had falsified the government's compliance with the 23% small business contracting goal by including  billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to over 5,300 Fortune 500 firms and other large businesses.

In 2008, President Obama released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants."

Judge Chhabria is expected to issue his ruling within the next two weeks to either allow the ASBL's case to move forward or dismiss the case as the SBA has requested.

Contact: Steve Godfrey
[email protected]
707-789-9575

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SOURCE American Small Business League