SBA FY 2010 Budget Looks Less Anemic
Jan 4th, 2010 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Politics & PolicyWhile everybody was busy hyperventilating over the down-to-the-wire legislative uber-drama of health care reform late last year, Congress was also relatively quietly getting its regular housekeeping chores done. Among said chores — which include such critical matters as the naming of post office buildings — was the disposition of those federal spending bills. There had been a spate of activity around five relatively non-controversial appropriations bills back in October. The remaining seven bills languished until mid-December, when Congress finally passed a Defense spending bill and mushed the remaining six bills together into the FY 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
In case you were wondering why we’re talking about this, the fiscal 2010 funding for the Small Business Administration is included in that consolidated appropriations bill. As might have been expected, the SBA’s budget, which had been suffering chronic and deep cuts under the Bush Administration, has come bounding back under President Obama. The agency’s appropriation for FY 2010 is a relatively healthy $824 million, which includes $25 million for Microloan and $134 million for the major entrepreneurial development programs (SBDCs, WBC and SCORE). Now that’s done, we have less than a month before the State of the Union Address, immediately following which the federal appropriations dance starts all over again.
