Women-Owned Small Business Program Transparency Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. HOULAHAN. Madam Speaker, I proudly rise today to urge my colleagues to vote for my straightforward, bipartisan bill that supports our Nation's female entrepreneurs. It is called the Women- Owned Small Business Program Transparency Act.

As an engineer myself, and an entrepreneur and operator, I know very much firsthand that data can help us to address and understand some of our most pressing issues in business. Here is what the data says: Year after year, women-owned small businesses continue to be underrepresented when it comes to Federal contract funding. In other words, the playing field isn't nearly level.

The good news is that there is already an initiative that is designed to address this. It is called the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contracting Program. This program is popular and necessary to bridge the disparity in Federal contracts, but it needs some additional improvements.

My bill will do just that by increasing transparency, oversight, and accountability. Through this program, the SBA aids other Federal agencies in meeting the statutory goal of awarding 5 percent of Federal contracts to women-owned businesses, a goal which the chairwoman mentioned has only been met twice in history.

The program has experienced challenges, including a significant backlog of applications and poor visibility of the approval numbers by national certifying entities. Our bipartisan bill will address these concerns by requiring the SBA to share six critical pieces of information:

One, the amount of contracting dollars that are awarded.

Two, the number of certifications that are issued.

Three, the amount of program examinations that are conducted.

Four, the number of companies that are decertified.

Five, the number of contracts that are incorrectly awarded.

Simply put, this bill will allow Congress and the SBA to work together to help women secure government contracts, especially those in underrepresented industries, which include the signature crop of our region, the mushroom industry, and also include underrepresented industries such as the dairy product manufacturing industry, which is represented by ByHeart, the only baby formula manufacturer that has been started in the last 15 years, that also happens to be in my district.

The time is now for us to act, both as our female businessowners continue to recover from the pandemic and as additional contracts are issued through the historic implementation of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and fellow entrepreneur from across the aisle, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney) for her partnership on this bill that will help level the playing field for all female entrepreneurs across our country.

I also thank and extend my thanks to Chair Velazquez and Ranking Member Luetkemeyer.

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