Who's running this show?

I've been wondering why small businesses haven't banded together to support programs that would give them an edge - programs that are, for the most part, more liberal than what the Republicans are up to - and now I see an article saying that the Small Business Administration actually refused to release a report that says, "large companies are winning contracts in the Federal government's $60-plus billion small business contracting program."

Lloyd Chapman, president of the ASBL, has no question about the SBA's reasons for hiding the report. "If there was nothing to cover up, they would have handed this report over months ago. The fact is that their edited report only listed 44 large companies as incorrectly receiving small business contracts, whereas we know that more than 600 large businesses have been taken off the SBA database in the past two years."

The Inspector General for the SBA has documented fraud within the SBA since 1995. Earlier this year, the SBA Office of Inspector General issued three reports citing misallocation of small business contracts to large businesses. According to the Inspector General, four out of six high-dollar small business contracts awarded by the SBA itself in fiscal years 2001 and 2002 were given to large businesses.

So, what does this mean? Are big businesses controlling the SBA to the detriment of small businesses? That would explain a lot.