When the House got finished with her, SBA Administrator Karen Mills faced a somewhat friendlier panel on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship finally held its second budget hearing of the 111th Congress last week. Very naturally, Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was full of praise for President Obama in her opening statement, expressing her support for the increases in the Small Business Administration’s budget for the second fiscal year in a row. Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was less effusive, expressing concern about the fact that the SBA’s non-lending core programs were flat-funded from fiscal 2010 levels and that a large percentage of the SBA’s budget increase was targeted towards administration. Senator Snowe was very clear that, in her opinion, the agency should contain the costs of overheard and put more of the Administration’s budget increase toward programs that actually help small business owners.

The interesting thing about prepared Administration witness testimony is that it always sounds good, regardless of who is in the White House. Mills outlined her opening defense of the Obama Administration’s $944 million budget proposal for her agency by outlining the Administration’s top three priorities for the SBA: access to capital, small business procurement, and delivering business management assistance to small businesses. So, why flat fund the entrepreneurial development programs and spend a bucket of money on administration? The largest expenditures turns out to be for replacement of such an elderly computer system that it runs on COBOL. Another sore spot, which only involved Mills to the degree that she was asked for her support, was the lack of movement in the Senate on targeted small business support. There has been much talk but no movement on about half a dozen bipartisan bills to help small businesses create the jobs needed in this jobless recovery, they complained.