Service-Disabled Veteran Opportunities in Small Business Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. McGARVEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3511, the Service-Disabled Veteran Opportunities in Small Business Act, which I am proud to lead with Representative LaLota.
I am grateful for his partnership, and I am grateful that the bill is on the floor today. I will echo the remarks of my colleague, Mr. LaLota. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have put on the uniform who were willing to fight for us and, of course, were injured in their service. It is up to us to support our veterans coming out of the military as much as we support them going in, especially those who return with the wounds from their service, both visible and invisible.
So many veterans come home looking for ways to continue serving their communities, including by starting small businesses, and the Small Business Administration does a great job of connecting veteran and disabled veteran entrepreneurs to critical resources they need to start businesses, but the Federal Government must do more to ensure all veteran entrepreneurs have the tools and opportunities they need for their new businesses to thrive.
For disabled veteran entrepreneurs, opportunity can come in the form of sole-source or set-aside contracts, but Federal agencies all too often fail to meet their service-disabled vet contracting goals.
This bill requires the SBA to issue guidance to other Federal agencies to better meet the contracting goals for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and it would additionally require the SBA to provide training to agencies that fail to meet these goals.
If the agencies fail to meet their contracting goals, then this bill requires a report to Congress detailing which agencies haven't met their goals so we can better understand what works, what doesn't, and what we can do to continue improving business opportunities for service-disabled veteran businessowners. We shouldn't stop until we are delivering on all of our promises.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this good bipartisan legislation and look forward to its passage today.
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