Speaking of the SBA’s entrepreneurial development programs and federal performance measures, there are clearly two problems where one intersects the other. The first and most obvious problem is that “bodies through the door” — that is, the number of users of the program — tells you nothing about whether the program successfully does what it sets out to do. Another and slightly more subtle problem is that the number of bodies through the door tells you nothing about whether the program is truly meeting the needs of small business owners. Just because people use the program does not establish that they wouldn’t use something else if something else were available. Conversely, just because people don’t use a program does not establish that the program is terrible and should be axed.

All of which is why, even though more than seven in ten microbusiness owners say they have not used federal small business assistance programs, it still makes perfect sense that 81% of them also say increased funding for those programs should be an Obama Administration priority, according to a member survey released by the National Association for the Self-Employed last week. Almost half of microbusiness owners (49%) say they haven’t used small business assistance programs because they didn’t know about them. At the same time, it is significant that only 14% said they didn’t need the help. That would seem to imply that if these programs were better publicized and if the programs had sufficient capacity to handle the demand, many more microbusiness owners would make use of them. So much for the theory that, if people aren’t using a program, it must mean they don’t want it.