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Women-Owned Small Business Program Transparency Act

Floor Speech

Date: June 7, 2022
Location: Washington, DC

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Ms. TENNEY. Madam Speaker, I am honored to partner with the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan) to introduce the bipartisan Women-Owned Small Business Program Transparency Act. In 2014 and 2019, the Government Accountability Office found that the Women- Owned Small Business program has several oversight deficiencies and needs to release more in-depth performance metrics to ensure it addresses the needs of women-owned small businesses and the taxpayer.

This legislation today addresses these concerns, requiring the Small Business Administration to annually disclose the total number of businesses that are certified as women-owned by the SBA, the number certified by third-party certifiers, and fees charged by third-party certifiers, the dollar amount and percent of contracts to women-owned small businesses, and the information on contracts incorrectly awarded.

For over two decades, the Women-Owned Small Business program has set aside at least 5 percent Federal contracting dollars for certified women-owned small businesses. This plays a small, but important, part of ensuring that the Federal Government does not leave our Nation's small businesses behind and that we continue to have a robust and competitive contractor ecosystem to pull from.

In New York's 22nd Congressional District, small businesses make up 94 percent of all employers, and I have witnessed firsthand the tremendous impact of women-owned small businesses. In fact, my own family business is a women-owned business. Whether it is Curcio Printing in the Southern Tier or AeroMed Technologies in Utica, our communities and, yes, our taxpayers benefit when women-owned businesses thrive.

With these additional metrics available to policymakers, it will pave the way for future improvements to the Women-Owned Small Business program. Only through full transparency can we ensure that this program works effectively and efficiently for small businesses and for taxpayers.

I thank, again, my partner and colleague, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan), for cosponsoring this great piece of bipartisan legislation, and I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting this.

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