Obama Administration Cancels Small Business Celebration, Possibly Over Embarrassing Report

PETALUMA, Calif., May 11, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Obama Administration abruptly canceled a scheduled White House event that was to be held on Friday, May 8 to announce their fiscal year 2014 Small Business Procurement Scorecard. 

Washington Journalist Kent Hoover may have frightened the Obama Administration into canceling a major White House event to celebrate the fiscal year 2014 Small Business Procurement Scorecard. It was anticipated the White House was going to announce small business received 25% of all federal contracts in fiscal year 2014. The Small Business Administration Press Office, headed by Terry Sutherland, may have panicked after Hoover asked for a list of the top 100 recipients of federal small business contracts. 

Over the last decade it has been widely reported that the vast majority of the top 100 recipients of federal small business contracts are actually Fortune 500 firms and other large businesses. Hoover had apparently told the Press Office he planned to ask SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet why the SBA had continued to include billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries in their small business contracting reports. 

The sudden decision to cancel the event also appears to have been related to an embarrassing report by Public Citizen that was released on Wednesday that challenged the accuracy of the Obama Administration's small business contracting data. The Public Citizen investigative report was based largely on research done by the American Small Business League and interviews with their President Lloyd Chapman.

Information Chapman provided to Public Citizen proved the SBA policy of including contracts to Fortune 500 firms in their small business data was in fact illegal, fraudulent and in direct violating of the Small Business Act. Chapman has released a series of press releases and blogs exposing the fraud in SBA managed programs.

Chapman also provided the language in the Small Business Act that proves the SBA policy of excluding billions from the overall federal procurement budget in order to significantly inflate the percentage of federal contracts that appear to have been awarded to small business was also blatantly illegal. The Small Business Act mandates a minimum of 23% of the total value of all federal contracts be awarded to small business and has no provisions for any exclusions used by the SBA to inflate and misrepresent the percentage of awards to small businesses.

The Obama Administration has not announced when the even will be rescheduled.