For the ninth consecutive year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has released fabricated and inflated data on the volume of federal contracts awarded to small businesses. The Obama Administration has chosen to follow in the footsteps of the Bush Administration by falsifying the government's compliance with the Congressionally mandated 23 percent small business contracting goal.
When the Obama Administration fabricates the government's compliance with the 23 percent small business goal, legitimate small businesses lose out on billions of dollars in contracts because the government hits the goal not by actually giving the appropriate volume of contracts to small businesses, but by falsifying compliance with the goal. If the Obama Administration were not allowed to get away with fabricated compliance with the small business goal, small businesses would receive billions more in government contracts.
Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have been released, which found Fortune 500 firms and thousands of large businesses have received billions of dollars in federal small business contracts. In 2005, the Small Business Administration's own Inspector General (IG) referred to the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire federal government today." (http://www.asbl.com/documents/05-15.pdf)
2009 will be the eighth consecutive year the SBA will claim Fortune 500 firms are receiving billions of dollars in federal small business contracts day after day, month after month and year after year, accidentally. The SBA claims "miscoding," "computer glitches," "honest mistakes" and "out of date information" are to blame.
There have been hundreds of stories on this issue over the years. Most of the major newspapers have covered it along with several major television networks like CNN, ABC and CBS. All of the stories on this issue have one thing in common. No journalist has ever asked the SBA or any other government official why "miscoding," "computer glitches," "honest mistakes" and "out of date information" always inflate the government's small business contracting statistics and never the other way around. No journalist has ever asked any government official to explain why every day for over eight years all these supposedly random mistakes always just happen to report government contracts to large businesses as small business awards. Can you flip a coin every day, all day long for eight consecutive years and make it come up heads every time? Of course not.
Why is it that of all the federal investigations that have ever been conducted, not one ever found Fortune 500 firms are receiving federal small business contracts accidentally through "miscoding"? What they have found is the SBA itself is reporting awards to some of the largest companies in the world as small business contracts. In Report 5-14, the SBA IG found the SBA was reporting awards to Dutch conglomerate Buhrmann NV, headquartered in Amsterdam with over 10,000 employees around the world in 26 countries as small business awards.
In Report 5-16, the SBA IG found large business were committing felony federal contracting fraud by making "false certifications" and "improper certifications."
The SBA Office of Advocacy found one of the reasons large businesses were illegally receiving federal small business contracts was because they were guilty of "vendor deception."
Why hasn't one journalist in seven years ever interviewed anyone from the SBA Office of Inspector General?
It is time for the mainstream media to do their job and get to the bottom of an eight year old federal contracting scandal that is pulling over $100 billion a year out of the middle class economy. By the way, don't dismiss the $100 billion number unless you can prove other wise. I challenge any one at the SBA, the White House or any other federal agency to prove me wrong.
There is no question that Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries are receiving federal small business contracts. The evidence is irrefutable. I guess the real question for any legitimate journalist is: Do you really believe this have happened for eight years accidentally?
Lets not forget that in the face of a dozen federal investigations and hundreds of stories on the press, the SBA even tried to claim that it was a "MYTH" that large business were receiving federal small business contracts. In a New York Times story from 2006, representatives from Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman even admitted they were receiving federal government small business contracts.
It seems there should be at least one journalist that isn't afraid of the Small Business Administration. Come on you wussies.
I tell you what I'll do, if any journalist will gut it up and take on the big bad SBA, I will even let you see the report I got from Senator John Kerry's office that talks about 10,000 federal contracts that are missing from the system and "contract numbers prior to 2002 have been concealed." That sounds juicy doesn't it?
It's time for some real investigative journalism to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Isn't someone curious as to why the SBA is willing to go the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to withhold the cell phone records of their PR guy Mike Stamler?