Presidential Candidates Asked to End Corruption and Fraud at SBA

PETALUMA, CA--(Marketwired - May 03, 2016) -  The American Small Business League (ASBL) has sent letters to Donald Trump, Senator Cruz, Governor Kasich, Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders in the form of national press releases asking them to pledge to keep a campaign promise President Obama made in 2008.

Responding to dozens of federal investigations and investigative reports in the media that found the Small Business Administration (SBA) was cheating small business out of billions in federal contracts and subcontracts President Obama released the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants."

Since President Obama took office the diversion of billions a month in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and corporate giants has continued. Every year of the Obama Administration the SBA Office of Inspector General headed by Obama appointee Peg Gustafson has named the diversion of federal small business contracts to large businesses as the number one problem with the upper management at the SBA.

The Government Accountability Office uncovered over 5,000 large businesses receiving billions in federal small business contracts in their investigation based on information provided by ASBL President Lloyd Chapman.

Hundreds of articles on the issue can be found on a wide variety of websites. The Associated Press and dozens of publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Government Executive, and Federal Times have all reported on the abuses at the SBA.

Most of the major national television news channels such as NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News and RRTV have produced stories on the issue.

In May of 2015, government watchdog group, Public Citizen, released a damming investigative report on the fraud titled "Sleighted." Public Citizen found the SBA had used "accounting tricks [to] create [a] false impression that small businesses are getting their share of procurement money…"

In the ASBL's most recent legal victory over the Pentagon to expose evidence of corruption and fraud in Pentagon small business programs, Federal Judge William Alsup stated "the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act is so the public can see how our government works. Congress passed this law to make small businesses have access to some of these projects, and here is the United States covering it up."

Research by the ASBL indicates over the last ten years the nation's 28 million small businesses may have been defrauded out of up to $2 trillion in federal contracts and subcontracts.

In 2014, American Express Open Forum named Lloyd Chapman one of the four strongest voices for small businesses in America for his campaign to end fraud in federal small business programs. The ASBL plans to release a documentary of the history of fraud at the SBA this summer.