Just over a decade ago, a trend emerged in government contracting: Small businesses began leaving the federal marketplace at an alarming rate, and new entrants weren’t stepping in to take their place. As a result, the number of small business vendors in the government’s ecosystem was cut nearly in half.
The shrinking industrial base set off bipartisan alarms and even prompted the Department of Defense to label it a national security risk.
That’s why it is troubling to see the wildly inaccurate attacks hurled at small government contractors and the Small Business Administration’s programs designed to recruit and retain them in the federal marketplace. Under the pretext of opposing "DEI" initiatives or wasteful spending, opponents are spreading false claims that threaten small business contracting programs and undermine the small firms that make up the backbone of our economy — and our industrial base.
Starting and growing a business is incredibly difficult. Competing for government contracts adds another layer of complexity, especially for small firms without the resources and scale of corporate giants.
To level the playing field, Congress, the Small Business Administration and federal agencies have long worked to ensure small firms have fair access to federal contracts. The primary way this is achieved is by setting goals for federal agencies to award a percentage of their planned contracts to small businesses every year.
These programs are not giveaways, subsidies or special treatment. They do not create new government spending. The dollars counted towards the goals pay the invoices from small businesses for the product or service they have delivered to their customers.
Critics who call these programs wasteful ignore the fundamental nature of government procurement. If a small business does not win a contract, a larger company does. The contract does not disappear, and the government does not save money. The only difference is whether taxpayer dollars strengthen small businesses or direct more money to large corporations.
Opponents of small business programs have also turned to the claim that these initiatives are "race-based." This is simply false.
For much of its history, the SBA’s 8(a) program allowed certain racial groups an expedited path to eligibility. But the program was never race-exclusive, and in 2023, that streamlined path was removed. Today, all applicants — regardless of race — must individually prove their social and economic disadvantage.
Calling small business programs "race-based" is a deliberate distortion meant to stir controversy. Worse, it implies that small business owners who benefit from them are unqualified, which is both inaccurate and insulting.
When people talk about wasteful government spending, they usually mean the government overpaid for something, purchased something unnecessary, or did not get what it was promised. But some are now arguing that a contract is "wasteful" simply because a disadvantaged small business won it. That is not about fiscal responsibility; it is about discrimination.
It is also confounding that some would equate a firm’s participation in these programs to mean that firm or its owner must therefore ...
