U.S. Small Business Administration Refuses to Release Report, Appeals Decision to Ninth Circuit to the ASBL

An interesting article from BusinessWire. It appears that the SBA (Small Business Association) is refusing to hand over their draft report on government contracting. In fact, it is appealing a court order to turn over the report! It appears that there is some funny business with the numbers in the report. SBA has edited the report to list only 44 BIG companies getting loans from the SMALL Business Association, when the actual figure is MORE THAN 600 BIG businesses that have actually been getting money.

Lloyd Chapman, president of the ASBL, has no question about the SBA's reasons for hiding the report. "If there was nothing to cover up, they would have handed this report over months ago. The fact is that their edited report only listed 44 large companies as incorrectly receiving small business contracts, whereas we know that more than 600 large businesses have been taken off the SBA database in the past two years."

The Inspector General for the SBA has documented fraud within the SBA since 1995. Earlier this year, the SBA Office of Inspector General issued three reports citing misallocation of small business contracts to large businesses. According to the Inspector General, four out of six high-dollar small business contracts awarded by the SBA itself in fiscal years 2001 and 2002 were given to large businesses.

Let me repeat that: FOUR OUT OF SIX high dollar small business contracts were given to LARGE BUSINESSES!

Every which way you turn, THIS ADMINISTRATION is giving away the farm to their rich and powerful corporate friends. Here is a government agency that is supposed to help SMALL businesses get loans. The government agency won't issue it's report, and the SBA has appealed a lower court ruling that it has to submit it's report. The good thing is, it's the 9th Circuit ... so I'm pretty sure SBA will lose that appeal.

Read more here.