The SBA, the Trade Agenda, and Budget Cuts

Small Business Administration

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is trying to expand the scope of its regulatory power in order to deal with large firms which have small front businesses.

Research Associate Jacqueline Otto says this is a good time to ask what the SBA does for the country.

“The SBA exhibits an inherent conflict of interest. Does it function for the sake of small business owners or that of the hand that feeds it — the federal government? On its face, it would appear that the SBA indeed works to advantage small businesses, and certainly there are many sincere, hard working employees who believe they are doing just that. But as is the case with many government programs, good intentions rarely survive political reality. The Small Business Administration is no exception.”

Trade Agenda

The New York Times reports that Obama’s trade agenda has “nearly ground to a halt.”

Adjunct Scholar Fran Smith talks about stalled free trade agreements.

“The Obama administration should get its head out of the sand and put the three pending FTAs on the fast track. Colombia already gets preferential tariffs under the ATPDEA. With the U.S.-Colombia deal, Colombia would remove more than 80 percent of Colombian duties on U.S. imports, with the remaining tariffs being phased out over ten years.”

Budget Cuts

Senate Democrats are complaining that the House’s 2% budget cut is too big.

Senior Counsel Hans Bader counters.

“If anything, the House Republicans should have gone further in trimming spending at the Pentagon, the Education Department (where spending has exploded), and on taxpayer-subsidized, union-backed, rail boondoggles that few people ride. They could also eliminate costly “green-jobs” programs that wipe out jobs (like a billion-dollar Obama administration boondoggle referred to as the “Biomass Blunder” by a leading environmental law professor), or effectively send them overseas.”