Obama SBA Pick Has Much To Prove
Jan 5th, 2009 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Politics & PolicyShortly before Christmas, President-elect Obama gave the politicians and pundits an early gift by making his final few pre-inauguration appointments. One of the nominees in that last batch was Karen Gordon Mills for Administrator of the Small Business Administration. Reaction from policy makers was swift and uniformly positive. Everybody was talking about Mills’ excellent qualifications and how her background in venture capital gave her important insights into small business financing that would serve her well in her new job. I think she’ll have little trouble with the confirmation process.
Meanwhile, even as the muckety-mucks were expressing uniform delight about the nomination, many in the small business community were not quite so thrilled. They weren’t precisely disappointed, either. Reaction might best be described as one huge, collective thought bubble question mark. That and a single reverberating question: Who? They question how well she understands the majority of small businesses, which have nothing to do with venture capital, and whether the nomination indicates that Obama has alarmingly little interest in ‘real’ small businesses. In general, the concensus seems to be that the small business community is concerned but will give her the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what she does.
