PETALUMA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The following is a statement by American Small Business League President Lloyd Chapman:
Everybody knows job creation is the number one issue in this election. Based upon U.S. Census Bureau data, we know small businesses create more than 90 percent of all net new jobs. We know the largest federal program to direct federal infrastructure spending to the middle class and America’s 28 million small businesses is the Small Business Act. That law directs that a minimum of 23 percent of the total value of federal contract dollars be spent with small businesses.
Unfortunately, since 2003, a series of federal investigations have found a major portion of federal small business funds have been diverted to Fortune 1000 firms in the U.S. and some of the biggest companies in the world. Some of the firms that the Obama administration has given small business contracts include Boeing, AT&T, Harris Corporation, Motorola, John Deere, L-3 Communications, Raytheon, Apple, Oracle, IBM, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard.
Romney should focus on the fact that, not only has President Obama killed millions of U.S. middle class jobs by diverting small business contracts to large business, but he is also shipping jobs overseas by giving small business dollars to foreign-owned companies. Some of the foreign-owned companies the Obama administration has given U.S. small business contracts include Rolls-Royce, British Aerospace and Finmeccanica—an Italian defense giant with 72,000 employees. His administration even gave more than $375 million in small business contracts to Rosoboronexport, an arms dealer owned by the Russian government.
President Obama recognized the magnitude of the problem in 2008 when he stated, “It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.” But the number of small business contracts awarded to large companies has actually gone up. The most recent federal contracting data indicates that 72 of the top 100 federal small business contractors are actually large businesses.
Every year President Obama has been in office, the Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General (SBA OIG) has named the diversion of federal small business contracts to large corporations as a top management challenge at the SBA. Despite that fact, the Obama administration has refused to back legislation or take any action to end the rampant abuses against American small businesses and the middle class.
So if Governor Romney wants to be president, he has one last chance to challenge President Obama’s abysmal record for small business and deliver a knockout blow that President Obama will not be able to recover from. He needs to simply ask President Obama why he is giving small business contracts to the largest companies in the world during the worst economic downturn in 80 years.
If Governor Romney fails to bring this up, it is doubtful that he’ll have a chance at being elected president, and I think the only logical conclusion we can draw is that he intends to continue the Obama administration’s policy of diverting federal small business contracts to large businesses.