As of this year, an estimated 8.1 million (29%) U.S. firms were women-owned (51% or more), generating almost $1.3 trillion in revenues and employing roughly 7.7 million people. That’s the main finding of an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data on women-owned businesses performed by our old friend Julie Weeks of Womenable.com for American Express [...]

Sometimes, Congress winds up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and that is never as true as it is when lawmakers don’t know what is going on out here in the real world. Last month, Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) introduced the Small Business Credit Card Act (H.R. 1137). This relatively short bill would [...]

Last week, the Senate Committee on Finance held a hearing to mark the first anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. There was quite a lot about the hearing that was completely predictable. Committee Democrats spent their time encouraging Secretary Sebelius to elaborate on the [...]

If you look carefully at President Obama’s most strenuous efforts at small business outreach, you might start to see a pattern emerge. Take a look at “Startup America,” the administration’s effort to encourage and support what it calls “high impact” small businesses. The SBA has already lined up a mentor matching program for those entrepreneurs [...]

If you’ve been wondering what the House Small Business Committee has been up to lately, one of their main orders of business has been President’s proposed fiscal 2012 budget for the Small Business Administration. The Committee held its budget hearing last week and, according to opening statements prepared by both Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) [...]

When lawmakers bleat about how much they love small businesses, it can sometimes be nauseating but it is still a little reassuring. It is a nod in our direction, even if they don’t mean a word of it.

On the other hand, I’ll admit that it’s difficult to listen to those same lawmakers behave like starstuck fangirls every time somebody like Bill Gates or Jeff Immelt visits Capital Hill. Clearly, they really believe that U.S. economic policy should revolve around big businesses.

I hesitate to say this because I know what kind of firestorm usually erupts whenever anybody evokes the “C” word.

Honesty compels me to admit, however, that we haven’t had economic policy revolving around small businesses since the days when there was a White House Conference on Small Business and when the SBA Administrator was elevated to a Cabinet level position.

It’s all starting to make sense now.

Back when President Obama first named Karen Mills to be his SBA Administrator, there were a lot of questions. Her background was in venture capital, we said. Will she run her agency for us all or will the focus change to those high growth gazelles?

I guess that answers that question.

According to the latest release on the subject from the Commerce Department, fourth quarter 2010 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth clocked in at 3.2%, following a third quarter that saw an increase of 2.6% in the GDP. All in all, that is a pretty respectable level of economic growth. The jobs picture is the classic [...]

Last week, President Obama sent his eagerly awaited budget proposal for fiscal 2012 to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. As you have probably been hearing since last week, the budget includes some cuts, a few increases, and a few revenue raisers. The resulting proposal is a $3.73 trillion budget that includes $1.1 trillion in budget deficit [...]

House Democrats are still fighting with the Republican majority over regulations and, specifically, over small businesses and regulations. That argument was very much on display during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, the subject of which was the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011 (H.R. 527). The bill [...]