Back in February, the American Small Business League endorsed Barack Obama for president, the only small business advocacy group, so far as the Agenda knows, to do so. Although it wasn't really of an endorsement -- it was more of a big wet kiss. "In my life, I have never been more excited about any politician than I am about Barack Obama," ASBL president Lloyd Chapman said at the time.

Actually, the ASBL's enthusiasm struck the Agenda as verging on cultish. When the Agenda spoke its mind, Chapman wrote back to affirm that "Sen. Obama is the only presidential candidate that has addressed" contracting fraud. "Our hope is that with Sen. Obama in the White House, small businesses nationwide will be able to count on him to eliminate the devastating fraud and abuse that has been the status quo during the Bush Administration."

Continue reading "When You Fall Out Of Love With Obama, You Fall Hard"

...Karen Gordon Mills, a Maine-based investment manager, according to an account in today's Portland Press Herald. (ABC News reported the story yesterday.) Obama is said to make the announcement today in Chicago. (Hat tip to an alert and thoughtful reader for forwarding the Maine paper's story.)

Mills, who served on Obama's SBA transition team, has been described as a venture capitalist, but she's really from the world of private equity. According to a bio from Arrow Electronics, where she's a director, she's served since 1993 as the president of the Brunswick, Maine-based private equity group MMP Group and until 2007 was a founding partner in Solera Capital, a private equity partnership in New York. (She's also the lead director of Scotts Miracle-Gro and serves in Maine as chair of the Governor's Council on Competitiveness and the Economy.)

Continue reading "And The SBA's Next Chief Is REALLY..."

...Magic Johnson?

Perhaps not, but that's who Karen Kerrigan, president and CEO of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council would pick. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal blog Independent Street, she outlined Magic's qualifications, as summarized by reporter Kelly Spors: "He's started a string of successful businesses, could draw celebrity attention to a stodgy federal agency, cares about helping the disadvantaged and urban revitalization and aligns himself with smart people." Says Kerrigan, "Even if it's something that he'd consider doing short term, I think it would be incredibly beneficial to the agency and small business."

If not Magic, then who? The Washington Post reports one name under consideration belongs to Annette Taddeo, a Colombian native who started LanguageSpeak, a translation firm in Miami and recently tried, unsuccessfully, to dislodge longtime Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. According to the Post, Los Angeles businesswoman Monica C. Lozano had been in the running, but is no longer. And the Washington Blade reports that Fred Hochberg, one of Obama's SBA transition team leaders and a former deputy administrator for the agency, is also being vetted for the job. If so, that makes the blueprint he published under the auspices of the Center for American Progress even more oracular.

For years, the small business constituency had a powerful advocate in Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. He was chairman of the Senate Committee of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, an undersized role for a former Democratic nominee for president. Though the committee's chief responsibility was overseeing the Small Business Administration, Kerry weighed in on the whole range of issues that affect entrepreneurs and small firms, sometimes clashing with his party in the process. He was, for instance, hostile to the notion of forcing hedge fund and private equity manager to pay income tax on the money they earned on the "carry" -- that is, on their 20 or 30 percent share of investment profits. He worried, he said at the time, that such a rule would choke off venture investment in small firms.

In the Congress, Kerry moves on to a much bigger pulpit: the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The helm of the Senate Small Business Committee goes to Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. The change is significant; Kerry brought a profile to the committee that Landrieu will find difficult to match. According to a ranking from the nonpartisan website congress.org, Kerry was the 12th most effective Senator in 2007, while Landrieu was 29th. Landrieu, though, did crack another Top Twenty list: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named her one of the 20 most corrupt people in Congress -- a dishonor awarded for a $2 million earmark she bestowed on a major campaign contributor. She joins such ill-distinguished company as Rep. William Jefferson, a fellow Democrat from Louisiana in whose freezer the FBI found a briefcase full of cash; Rep. Rick Renzi, a Republican from Arizona indicted for fraud; and Sen. Ted Stevens, a recently convicted felon. Of these four, she's the only one to win re-election to the 111th Congress.*

Senator Kerry will be missed. Let's hope he stops in at a hearing from time to time.

*All told, the list includes 17 Republicans and seven Democrats.

Last week, the Center for American Progress offered the incoming Obama Administration a public memo on the future of the Small Business Administration. CAP is a Democratic Party think tank with a stubbornly centrist (as the name implies) bent -- it was founded by Clinton White House hands -- and the SBA's mission resonates with centrists: it's the government helping business. "The new president has the opportunity to channel SBA’s business development programs and support tools to help small businesses contribute to the growth and stability of the economy," writes (pdf) Fred Hochberg. "The new administration will also have to consider which SBA programs gutted or eliminated by the Bush administration should be revived or restored." Hochberg served as a deputy SBA administrator in the -- wait for it -- Clinton Administration.

Continue reading "A Peek At Obama's SBA"

This is the blog post I wanted to publish today:

Let us go back, shall we, to the heady days of September 2008, when plutocratic bankers, of the kind Thomas Nast once drew, clamored for public money -- for the good of the nation. "This is not about how to bail out Wall Street," wrote Kenneth Lewis, Chairman, CEO and President of Bank of America, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled "Main Street Needs The Treasury Plan." "This is about saving the U.S. financial system for the benefit of American businesses, consumers and the economy at large." You remember the argument: because of the choices they'd made, banks were finding it hard to borrow money themselves, and had stopped lending to businesses large and small. "Without a systemic solution, this problem will get worse," Lewis wrote. "Workers will bear much of the impact."

So now that BofA has a $25 billion government backstop, it's loaning to small businesses, right? Alleviating the stress on workers, right? Wrong! Last week, in Chicago, 230 workers began a sit-in at Republic Windows & Door after the manufacturer abruptly shut down. The company, hit hard by the slowdown in construction, said it couldn't continue operations once its lender refused to extend its line of credit. That lender was -- wait for it -- Bank of America.

Continue reading "No Good Guys At Republic Windows"

It's sometimes worth remembering that the National Federation of Independent Business is not the only small business lobby crawling the corridors of Washington power. The National Small Business Association was founded in 1937, and claims 150,000 members. This morning, it's unveiling an economic initiative for the President-Elect Obama and the incoming Congress called "Think Big. Start Small."

Continue reading "The NSBA's Muddle Way"

Small Business Administration guaranteed lending appears to be collapsing, and the agency is loosening the rules on the interest rates banks can charge in order to induce more lending.

According to figures provided by the agency, the total number of loans funded in the 7(a) program dropped by 30 percent in fiscal year 2008. Meanwhile, the total amount of money approved fell 11 percent, to $12.7 billion. But because these are full-year figures, they mask the more dire immediate trend. In the first five weeks of fiscal year 2009, which began October 1, dollars loaned with 7(a) guarantees have plummeted nearly 40 percent, and the number of loans approved has fallen by more than half.

Continue reading "SBA Lending In Freefall"

This year, the National Federation of Independent Business put up $1.6 million to support a handful of Republican running for re-election or election to Congress, wading in to closely contested races with sharp-edged TV, radio, and print ads. The Agenda reported a couple weeks ago that this was a change in strategy for the small business lobby; as Lisa Goeas, the NFIB's vice president, political, told me, "Usually we play in a lot of races," -- a couple dozen House races and eight to ten Senate races -- "and we usually don't do TV or cable."

So did the gamble pay off? Half of the races remain too close to call. Of the other three, the NFIB's candidate has won in one.

Continue reading "Did The NFIB's Campaign Gamble Pay Off?"

A year ago, the Entrepreneurial Agenda took its campaign coverage to Iowa. In a conference room at the Des Moines Partnership, a handful of entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the issues that were most important to them and how well the candidates were addressing them. (You can read that entire conversation here.) Now, on the morning after, we thought we'd give those entrepreneurs the last word. So far, four of the original seven participants have recounted their experience; as we hear from the remaining three, we'll add their voices.

Continue reading "The Vote In Iowa"