Speaking of re-authorization, last week, the House Small Business Committee continued down their own path to SBA re-authorization — having already dealt with the entrepreneurial development programs — with a look at the SBA’s access to capital programs. The Committee held a somewhat lengthy hearing with two panels of witnesses, one of which held representatives from various sorts of small business capital institutions and the other sported small business owners representing various trade groups. On the first panel, representatives from community banks, credit unions, community development companies and small business investment companies want those temporary fee reductions made permanent, less paperwork and less burdensome regulatory compliance chores. And everybody wants to know why the Treasury Department is dragging its feet implementing President Obama’s plan to unfreeze the small business loan secondary market.

One thing that was particularly striking was the way all the lenders among the witnesses spoke about how they were comfortably capitalized and had been seen increased small business demand, and that they were in their communities ready and willing to lend to small firms. What made that testimony striking was that the members of the next panel, comprised entirely of small business owners, wondered aloud who all these small business owners were that were getting all these loans? Meanwhile, Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) seems determine to provide adequate options to all small businesses at both ends of the spectrum, according to a press release issued by the Committee following the hearing. That’s encouraging but there was little evidence of that care and attention to the needs of the micro-borrower at the hearing. This panel seems to have much work to do in order to simply understand the problem. The key to getting there is to keep talking and to avoid getting distracted by other issues on the Congress’s plate right now.