The House Speaker's staff posted a blog today (Dec. 1, 2011) titled, "Uncertainty Hampering Small Businesses, GOP Taking Action with Plan for Jobs," heavily criticizing the Obama administration for not taking small business concerns seriously.
Speaker Boehner is correct that President Obama is failing to support small businesses, but he and the GOP are merely using their jobs plan as a ruse to deregulate Fortune 1000 corporations.
Since taking office the president has completely ignored America's oldest and most cost-effective economic stimulus program, the Small Business Act. This existing federal law aims to stimulate the American economy by requiring that a minimum 23 percent of all federal contract dollars be awarded to small businesses. The Act defines a small business as being "independently owned," which excludes publicly traded corporations.
Yet every year, federal agencies fraudulently misreport their funding actions as contracts awarded to small businesses, when in reality, large corporations like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Italian defense giant Finmeccanica, Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace are the true recipients of the majority of federal small business contracts. More than a dozen federal investigations conducted since 2003 confirm this.
In recent weeks, mention of a federal bio-defense contract given to Siga Technologies, a company controlled by private equity mogul Ronald Perelman (a top Democratic donor), has sparked a scandal.
Republicans, who otherwise don't bother to point out contracting fraud, pounced on the $433 million sole-source contract from the Department of Health and Human Services that Siga received in May to make an experimental smallpox treatment, because Democratic donors may have benefited.
Before Siga received the contract, a small business complained about not being allowed to bid on the
smallpox drug contract, bringing attention to the fact that the government was about to give a small business contract worth as much as $2.8 billion to Siga Technologies, a publicly traded company.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Small Business Administration agreed that Siga's affiliation with Ronald Perelman's holding company, MacAndrews & Forbes, disqualified Siga Technologies from the contract. Still, in the long run (having spent $800,000 on campaign donations and lobbying efforts since 2005) Siga received a $433 million contract to develop the smallpox vaccine without competition.
Siga Technologies threatened The Huffington Post with legal action in October 2010 for reporting that "Siga had named labor leader Andy Stern to its board and compensated him with stock options that would become dramatically more valuable if the company managed to win the contract it sought with HHS."
Siga won the bid one week after the offending Huffington Post article, although the contract was specifically required to be awarded to a small business.
The Los Angeles Times reported last month that "the Obama administration could have awarded the contract to Chimerix as the only eligible small-business applicant. Or it could have reopened the competition to companies of any size. Instead, the administration moved to block all companies -- except Siga -- from bidding on a second offering of the contract."
This flies in the face of American small business programs.
Discoveries such as these are irrefutable evidence that federal contracts with publicly traded companies shouldn't be counted as small business awards and that federal oversight is needed to prevent the highest paying lobbyists from holding a monopoly of the federal acquisitions budget.
And while the GOP is no doubt overjoyed about the potential damage the Siga scandal has inflicted on Obama's incumbency, very few members of Congress are willing to approve legislation that would end federal contracting fraud.
During his 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama stated, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." Since taking office, President Obama has failed to follow on that promise. As a result, during every day of his administration, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal small business contracts are illegally diverted to large businesses.
SBA Inspector General Peggy Gustafson testified before Congress in October, naming the issue of federal small business contracting abuse as a "top management challenge" facing the SBA for the seventh consecutive year.
Georgia Representative Hank Johnson introduced H.R. 3184, "The Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act," to the House in October. Now under consideration by the House Small Business Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, H.R. 3184, "The Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act," presents a straightforward solution to the decade-long existence of federal small business contracting abuse in the United States.
If passed, H.R. 3184 would prohibit publicly traded companies from receiving federal small business contract awards and therefore re-divert more than $100 billion in federal infrastructure spending to small businesses every year. The bill currently has 17 co-sponsors (all Democrats), although H.R. 3184 should have the full support of the House, Senate and Executive branch because it presents a simple, deficit-neutral solution for significant job creation that requires no new taxes and no new spending.
If Speaker Boehner and the GOP wanted to go above and beyond supporting small businesses, they would urge House Small Business Committee Chair Sam Graves to appear on national television daily, campaigning to stop federal small business contracting fraud by supporting H.R. 3184.
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He allowed the minority set asides for small business to be dismantled under his watch.
He also promised to end the diversion of small business contracts to giant corporations.
It's the bottom of the ninth, bases are empty, and the count is 0-2 on the President.
Nancy Pelosi will be happy to regain control of the house - and her normal sized gavel - and get back to work in 2012.
4)Senator Claire Mccaskill: desperately wants to get reelected and knows that separating herself from Obama, and anything Obama related will help her odds. Â Siga's contract has been attached to Obama (even though funding for st246 started under president bush) and Solyndra, what better of an issue to attack??
Unfortunately, the tragedy here is that the story of ST-246, and the NEED to have it in the national stockpile, is being lost in the above stated feeding frenzy. Â Siga's drug, ST-246, is the real deal. It is a CURE for orthopox viral infections. Â How many other cures do you know of?
Regarding efficacy, ST-246 tested successfully in every animal challenge to date has been used 4 times in human vaccinia related infections. Â Vaccinia is what the smallpox vaccine is made from and is a closely related virus to variola (smallpox).Â
ST246 has been tested in multiple CDC sanctioned clinical trials to date for safety. Â It has demonstrated a completely safe profile. Chimerix's drug cmx001 has been unable to protect every monkey subjected to nonhuman primate lethal challenges. Â All of their monkeys are DEAD!
What I want to point out is that you fail to grasp the point of this piece, it has nothing to do with Siga or Solyndra who you keep mentioned...let it go already...anyway, the point is that the Obama administration gave a small business contract to a large firm and will count this gigantic contract towards their small business goals, thus ensuring actual small businesses will lose out on at least 433 million dollars in contracts that should have gone to them. Couple that with the fact the current Speaker and the entire GOP congressional delegation are lying sacks of sh*t who hide behind the guise of supporting small businesses with colorful rhetoric, but absolutely no action...not one bill they have introduced will actually help small businesses, they are all give aways to corporate America and leave small businesses with the scraps...
1) Chimerix : Through their lobbyist, John Clerici of McKenna, Long, and Aldridge, has been successfully protesting this contract through whatever means possible to buy more time for their unsatisfactory antiviral candidate cmx001. This is absolutely disgusting considering their actions are directly impacting the national security of the United States by impairing the stockpile.
2) The GOP: On the surface this looks like solyndra, so the are labeling it as such.  With election season cranking up, the attacks will as well.  Remember representative Issa 'looked in to' Siga's contract as well, and then we didn't hear anything out of him after it was learned that he had financial ties to McKenna, Long, and Aldridge, and as a result Chimerix.
3) Authors: David Willman of the Los Angeles started this frenzy with his one sided, poorly researched hit piece...maybe he's on McKenna, Long, and Aldridge's payroll too, who knows???  Every conservative blogger known to man, desperately wants to make this the next Solyndra as well. Even the author of this article, clutched onto the small business side of the story, FAILING to mention that Siga had the only qualifying product, out of any company large or small.Â
(Cont'd)
That's cuz the top 1% own more than 40% of the wealth (which means they're NOT paying their share)
How many small business(men) are in the top 1%?
He doesn't care about SMALL BUSINESS.
Occupy!
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/25-6
When was the last time the republicans behaved in a civil manner towards this president?
All of the republicans in leadership positions, and many newcomers, have been insubordinate, rude and dismissive.
Imagine how Cheney would have reacted if anyone on the left had treated W in this manner....