Procurement and Micros Not Mutually Exclusive
Dec 8th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: EconomyNow that President-elect Obama has added a bit more in the way of detail to his public pronouncements about his economic plan, we learn that he hopes to embark on the largest series of public works projects since FDR. Repairs to highways and bridges, renovations to schools, access to electronic medical records for hospitals and doctors, and more. And, in carrying out all these projects, there will be much money for those businesses hired to do the work. It would be nice if microbusinesses got a shot at that particular pie for a change.
It seems unlikely that Congress will include funding for the SBA to hire more procurement center representatives to advocate for small businesses with federal agencies. Even if they did, it is doubtful that streamlining procurement processes and procedures to make them more microbusiness friendly would not be on the agenda. Of course, selling things to federal or state government is not the only way that microbusiness owners stand to reap the benefits of any proposed economic stimulus. Any act on the part of the government that generates jobs and improves spending activity among consumers will be good. But the fact is that first-hand beneficiaries of President-elect Obama’s proposed orgy of public works spending will get a much larger share of the pie than those firms that have to wait around for second or third-hand benefits. It would be good, for both microbusinesses and for the overall economy, if state and federal contracts were spread among as broad a pool of small firms as possible and that includes even the smallest among them.
