Here’s an almost unheard-of concept: if a government program isn’t working, how about turning it off and returning the unused portion of its budget to the Department of the Treasury? It’s the kind of thing that might fall under the category of “careful stewardship of taxpayer dollars” and it almost never happens. But that is [...]

It seemed as if everyone in Small Business-ville, USA, was abuzz with excitement earlier this month when the White House convened a Small Business Financing Summit hosted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and SBA Administrator Karen Mills. Only about 100 people were invited to participate in the summit but I’m happy to report that, among [...]

Congress returns from its brief Veterans Day break this week and will leave town again next week for Thanksgiving. One of the things expected to happen during this particular flying visit to Capitol Hill between District Work Periods is a vote in the House on a fistful of small business related bills. Three of them [...]

According to a study released earlier this month from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, credit card debt appears to increase the likelihood of new business failure within its first three years of operation. The study, unexcitingly entitled The Use of Credit Card Debt by New Firms, uses data from the 2004 Panel Study of Entrepreneurial [...]

Small firms with available internal funds are more likely to demonstrate either sales growth or employment growth, or both. That is the unremarkable finding from a recently released study from the SBA Office of Advocacy. “How Strong Is The Link Between Internal Finance and Small Firm Growth? Evidence from the Survey of Small Business Finances” [...]

Last month, the MEJ introduced you to a compendium of research on small business finance released by the SBA Office of Advocacy and entitled, appropriately enough, Small Business in Focus: Finance. The first report was, you may recall, a general overview of the small business lending market according to loan amounts and lending institutions. That [...]

Congress has been working with quiet but surprisingly diligent effort to pass the several pieces of legislation needed to (finally) reauthorize the U.S. Small Business Administration — preferably for longer than a few months. So far, bills to reauthorize and “improve” the SBA’s entrepreneurial development programs and its research grants programs have passed in the [...]

Last week, the SBA Office of Advocacy released a compendium of research on small businesses and access to capital, a topic very much in the forefront of small business policy makers over the last ten months. The research consists of four papers, released under the single and easy to understand title Small Business in Focus: [...]

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 [...]

The SBA Office of Advocacy released its annual report on small and microbusiness lending last week, for the data year encompassing June 2007 to June 2008. As the economy slowed through the second half of the period, small business lending overall slowed significantly. Dollar volume was up by 4%, or $26.7 billion, but that was [...]