PETALUMA, Calif., April 27, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a press release on Monday, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced they will finally be releasing the Small Business Federal Procurement Scorecard for FY2015 on Thursday.
Despite a series of federal investigations and investigative reports, which found 151 Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries received federal small business contracts in FY2015, SBA's John Shoraka, is already claiming "This certainly is the best data set we've had in history."
However, the SBA has had a history of inflating their "best" data to reach a minimum goal of 23% of the total value of all federal contracts to small businesses. In May 2015, a report from Public Citizen questioned the SBA's past data as being falsified to misrepresent the true volume of federal contracts awarded to small businesses.
The American Small Business League (ASBL) predicts the SBA will inflate the numbers, as they customarily do, in two strategic ways. First, to inflate the percentage the SBA will use a number that is less than a third of the actual federal acquisition budget. According to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, the 2015 total federal acquisition budget was over a trillion dollars, yet the SBA used their "eligible" dollar figure of $352 billion to inflate the percentage. Secondly, the SBA has always included billions of dollars in contracts to some of the biggest companies around the world in their numbers. One of America's leading experts on federal contracting law, Professor Charles Tiefer, found no federal law allowing large businesses to be considered small businesses.
Every year since being appointed by the Obama Administration, the SBA Inspector General, Peggy Gustafson, has named the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal Government today."
Even President Obama acknowledged the magnitude of the problem when he released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants."
Thursday's release of the small business contracting data will likely reveal that billions of dollars in small business contracts were diverted to large businesses during Fiscal Year 2015. The American Small Business League estimates that small businesses have already been cheated by as much as 2 trillion dollars over the past 10 years.
"I think the Washington media is partly responsible because the fraud was first exposed in 2002, and yet, not one journalist in 15 years has ever asked the Small Business Administration to show the section of the Small Business Act which would allow the inclusion of Fortune 500 firms under small business subcontracting data," stated ASBL President Lloyd Chapman.
ASBL President Lloyd Chapman has been recognized as one of the four strongest voices for small businesses for his efforts to end fraud in small business contracting. This summer, the American Small Business League is expected to release a feature length documentary on the history of corruption and fraud at the Small Business Administration.