It seems as if it was broadband week on Capitol Hill, as both the House and Senate Small Business Committees played host to meetings to discuss high speed Internet access and its impact on small businesses. Over in the House, Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez convened a hearing last Wednesday that was immediately striking because it [...]

During his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama announced his goal to double U.S. exports within the next five years. It seems a laudable goal for a CEO-in-Chief. The economy has been pretty much in the tank since before Obama took office. The job market is only just starting to show [...]

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 [...]

SBA Administrator Karen Mills had a busy day last Wednesday. Before she appeared before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship to defend her agency’s fiscal 2011 budget request, she joined SBA Inspector General Peggy Gustafson at an oversight hearing before the House Committee on Small Business. Recent House rules require quarterly oversight hearings [...]

Most mainstream American whites like to indulge themselves with the comfortable belief that we, as a nation, have long since conquered the ugly scourge of racism. That is why, when minorities complain of the racially-based challenges they continue to face, those complaints are often chalked up to hypersensitivity and dismissed. Sadly for them, the numbers [...]

I suppose it’s possible that all sorts of Americans in different circumstances and different walks of life might have different ways of “celebrating” April 15th — Tax Day — in addition to a dramatic wipe of the brow and a declaration that it’s Miller Time®. On Capitol Hill, where it probably should not be expected [...]

As much of a nightmare as this recession has been for the entire global economy, and as scary as it was to watch the entire capital market system upon which capitalism rests teeter on the brink, there has been one ray of sunshine to emerge from the shambles. Some of the more obscure microbusiness service [...]

Late last month, the House passed the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act of 2010 (H.R. 4849), which does all sorts of things that are supposed to inspire small business owners to create jobs while simultaneously including enough revenue raisers to avoid falling afoul of those PAYGO rules. For example, this bill attempts to [...]

Congressional Republicans have been indulging in a few schoolyard antics that we parents might use as examples to our children of poor sportsmanship, conduct that undesirable and not to be emulated. For example, thanks to the arcane rules of the Senate, Republicans brought the work of that body to a halt last Wednesday by refusing [...]

It’s difficult to think back this far but, a couple of years ago, when then-Senator Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, one of the ideas he touted to support small businesses and help the economy was a national network of business incubators. Fast forward a year and a half or so, and there hasn’t [...]