On April 5th, 2017 the House Small Business Committee hosted a hearing “Taking Care of Small Business: Working Together for a Better SBA” in which SBA Administrator Linda McMahon testified on the current state of SBA and initiatives she will prioritize in her tenure.
She opened her testimony addressing the controversial reporting surrounding SBA’s flagship 7(a) business loan guarantee program. Reports state that it may be, once again, at risk of exceeding is programmatic authority. If you recall in 2015, SBA reached its allocated program authority, as a response NDC and the greater lending community lead an initiative to persuade Chairman Chabot to seek assistance from Congressional leadership to reach “unanimous consent” to rapidly increase the lending authority of SBA.
Administrator McMahon proclaimed, “I am here today to assure you that while the agency is seeing increased demand by the small business community, we are not currently in jeopardy of exceeding our capacity to meet such needs. We have contacted, and continue to work with, the SBA lending community to inform them that the agency is in good financial position with sufficient resources through the end of the fiscal year.”
The Administrator went on to express her desire to see a growth of women and minority entrepreneurs access to capital through SBA. She outlined her personal path of starting a small business and vowed to do a better job at marketing the resources of the agency and making SBA more visible to all audiences. She spent time highlighting an initiative she’s implementing by harnessing the young tech savvy energy at the agency for a “pitch-contest” to break the rigid bureaucratic image of SBA.
After her testimony she fielded questions for the panel of lawmakers on an array of issues from the cyber security infrastructure of the agency, eliminating red tape and the cumbersome regulatory environment, efficiencies of the private sector and their application in SBA, disaster relief funding, and many more. The full testimony of the Administrator as well as the opening statement from Chairman Chabot and a live recording can be found here.