Committee Calls for Savings in Views & Estimates of SBA Budget
Press Release
The Committee on Small Business, led by Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO), today conducted a markup and passed its Views and Estimates on the Fiscal Year 2015 budget for the Small Business Administration (SBA) that calls for about $50 million in savings from the President's budget request.
Each year, the Committee examines the SBA's budget request, and lays out the Committee's recommendations to allocate taxpayers' dollars in a way that will improve the performance of the SBA and without diminishing services provided to small businesses. This year, the Committee identified wasteful duplications in SBA operations and recommends correcting that by eliminating $39 million in new spending for unproven and duplicative SBA-created entrepreneurial training initiatives. The Committee also proposes eliminating two outreach offices that provide services available from other government agencies with greater resources resulting in a savings of about $14 million.
"The SBA, and every federal agency, should do their part in finding savings and providing services efficiently so that we can do more to reduce the deficit and get the economy back on track," said Chairman Graves. "As the Committee's Views and Estimates show, the SBA can save $50 million by cutting duplication and reallocating resources to proven initiatives rather than spending on costly and unproven SBA-created programs. The SBA should renew their commitment to the services that benefit small businesses the most, and fix or cut that which is failing. Bloated budgets are relics of the past.
"Our nation's debt crisis is not only a burden on the next generations of Americans, it is a burden on the economy and small businesses now," Chairman Graves continued. "This is not the time for federal agencies to look for new ways to spend more money. Unproven programs are a luxury the federal government cannot afford. Instead, the SBA should stick to running programs that actually work on Main Street, not ideas concocted inside the beltway; serving America's job creators; and being the voice for small businesses that this Administration has too often lacked."
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