President Obama's latest claim that he's going to shrink government by combining the Small Business Administration with the Department of Commerce is laughable.
He called a national press conference on the subject of shrinking government to only announce that he wants to combine one of the smallest agencies in the federal government with the Department of Commerce and several other federal trade and commerce departments.
This is really absurd.
He's got to be the first president in recent history to hold a national press conference to announce only saving $3 billion dollars over 10 years -- that's only $300 million dollars a year.
If Obama really wanted to talk about shrinking government, he would talk about some of the larger agencies. The purpose of shrinking government is to reduce federal overhead while cutting out unnecessary inefficiencies. The Small Business Administration is not an unnecessary inefficiency, however. It is the only federal agency that exists to ensure that U.S. small businesses, which create 90 percent of all net new jobs in the nation, receive the 23 percent of all federal contracts congressionally mandated by the Small Business Act.
To put this issue in perspective, the $3 billion dollar savings over the next 10 years that President Obama is proposing to achieve with the consolidation of six federal trade and commerce agencies (including the SBA) is equal to only .0005 percent of the projected $6 trillion to be spent by the Pentagon over the next ten years.
Of course, I have been predicting the federal government would do this for years. On November 25, 2008 I issued a press release predicting that President Obama would attempt to close the SBA by combining it with the Department of Commerce. I made the same prediction in November 2010 and also criticized Republican efforts to attempt a similar merger in August 2011.
Here's the truth about what the President is doing:
This is a publicity stunt that diverts public attention away from a typical government trick to get rid of a federal agency -- combine the agency you don't want to keep with another department, like the Department of Commerce -- Reagan did the same thing with the Minority Business Development Agency.
The pentagon and the nation's top defense contractors have been pushing the elimination of the 23 percent federal small business contracting goal for decades; this is just the latest attempt by the corporate giants that run Washington to try to get 100 percent of all federal contracting dollars into their pockets. The federal government is the world's largest purchaser of goods and services -- eliminating the 23 percent contracting goal would be a major detriment to small businesses.
When you look at the facts, I've already seen reporters on national television referring to this $3 billion dollar cut over 10 years as 'a drop in the bucket'. Why then would President Obama hold a national press conference to announce saving a 'drop in the bucket'?
He's running for re-election, that's why. This is just a P.R. campaign.
To try to say that we're going to shrink government by combining the SBA with the Department of Commerce is an insult to the intelligence of every taxpayer in the country.
This is all about Obama trying to get re-elected and working to defeat who ever the Republican frontrunner becomes.
Unfortunately, at a time when our nation is in the midst of the worst economic downturn in 80 years, the last thing we need is to take the only agency that helps the 28 million small businesses in America create over 90 percent of all net new jobs every year and combine it with the Department of Commerce.
We should be doing just the opposite. The SBA's budget should be increased ten-fold and federal programs to help America's chief job creators should be expanded dramatically.
And this isn't the first time he's abolished federal small business contracting programs. Obama already announced several months ago plans to eliminate the oldest federal contracting plan for minority-owned small businesses -- on September 9th, 2011 the Obama administration announced plans in the federal register to end the Pentagon's 5 percent contracting goal for minority-owned small businesses.
It's a tragedy that this didn't receive more attention in the mainstream media. After all, here's the nation's first African-American president and first African-American Attorney General ending the only federal program to direct federal infrastructure spending to minority-owned small businesses.
And now he's going after more small businesses.
I hope that nobody is fooled by his little dog-and-pony show.
This is a tragedy and the truth about this will be sadly under-reported in the mainstream media. I just hope Congress doesn't let him get away with it -- and I'm going to do everything I can to stop him.