Panel told of abuse in small-business set-asides

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

Small government contractors often violate regulations by passing on most of the work and profits to large businesses, a practice that crowds out legitimate small businesses from the federal market, according to a House oversight panel Thursday.

“When a prime contract is set aside for a small business, the government wants to make sure that the small business is not simply a front for a large business, so the Small Business Act requires that the small business perform a certain percentage of the work,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee on contracting and workforce.

The hearing focused on contracts in which government investigators have concluded that subsidiaries of Alaskan native corporations passed on the bulk of more than $1 billion worth of work to subcontractors.

Those native corporations can receive contracts of any size without competition through a special set-aside program, even if they do not have the experience or resources to perform the contracts themselves.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/panel-told-of-abuse-in-small-business-set-asides/2011/10/06/gIQAHtqCRL_story.html

[midnight]

1. So SBA didn't help small business... It was known ten years ago here in Wiscosnin that SBA

loans were given to IBM and that there was a problem for real small business to get contracts.... I did not know about this set-aside program.... I wonder how the real small business will get this set aside contracts... Sounds like all the other programs aimed as helping mainstreet... Toothless....

[formercia]

2. The Military Industrial Complex is a primary abuser.

Daddy Warbucks' favorite scam.

[No Elephants]

3. I have seen up close what people CLAIM is abuse in affirmative action set aside programs.

Is there some abuse? Yes. A percentage, just as with everything.

However, these programs were made necessary by centuries of discrimination against women and minorities by general contractors, government contracting agencies and, yes, unions. And they have been very necessary and done a lot of good.

Stop anything and everything because a percentage abuse it and the abusers are ALL that will remain making yet more money, which is what the objective is.

There's abuse in Medicare. Anyone here for ending that because some abuse it?