Today, the House Committee on Small Business is holding a full committee hearing titled “Reducing Mismanagement: GAO Recommendations for Improving the SBA.”

Chairman Williams’ opening statement as prepared for delivery:

Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing which will focus on examining the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations for reducing mismanagement at the SBA.  

I’d like to start off by thanking our witnesses for joining us today. Your attendance is greatly appreciated, and we value your input.

The SBA was thrust into the national spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. They took on an oversized role in the delivery of pandemic assistance when American entrepreneurs were in great need. Now that the pandemic is over, we have been seeing all the after-action reports on how the Agency did during those stressful days.

Unfortunately, the Inspector General and other government watchdogs discovered there were hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars stolen by fraudsters. It became abundantly clear to this Committee that the COVID-19 pandemic broke the SBA, and it is time to open the hood and fix what failed the American taxpayers.

At the start of each Congress, the GAO releases a High Risk List report of programs with significant problems that have high vulnerability to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Unfortunately, the SBA still has many outstanding recommendations on this list that we are going to hear about in more detail this morning.

It is imperative that this Committee evaluates not just how the SBA handled the previous pandemic, but also what role they should be playing in the future. Given their poor track record detecting fraud on the front end, I am very skeptical that this agency should ever be charged with delivering such large quantities of taxpayer dollars ever again. Additionally, since there was so much fraud that took place, I would hope that more of the GAO’s recommendations would have been completed by now, since many of them go into discussing the integrity and fraud controls within the programs.

The SBA’s inability to address the open GAO recommendations is cause for concern over its ability to aid our nation’s job creators. When businesses have operations issues, changes are quickly made to ensure it doesn’t happen again. This same entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t seem to exist at this agency, which seems to be weighed down by slow-moving bureaucracy.

Look no further than the Agency’s work from home-policy. Even though the Biden Administration has been pushing hard to get employees back in the offices, the SBA is still only utilizing around 10% of their office space. This is not only a slap in the face to small business owners that get dressed and go to work every day, but also undoubtedly reducing the quality of work from people who might be more focused on walking their dog or doing laundry than helping an entrepreneur in need.

It is my hope that today’s conversation can point us in the right direction regarding what needs to change at the SBA. Our Committee’s job is to be Main Street’s voice at the table, and we will continue to do our best on their behalf.

I’d like to once again thank our witnesses for being here with us today. I’m very much looking forward to our conversation.

With that, I will yield to our distinguished Ranking Member from New York, Ms. Velasquez.

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