Small Businesses Demand President Obama Keep Campaign Promise

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 23, 2009

Petaluma, Calif. – Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have found billions of dollars in government small business contracts have been diverted to many of the largest companies in the United States and Europe. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html)

Report 5-15 from the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards." (http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf)

A year ago, on February 26, President Obama released the following statement, "98 percent of all American companies have fewer than 100 employees. Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation's economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." Since then he has offered no legislation or policy to keep that promise. (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php)

Since that date, President Obama's campaign website was modified to remove the statement, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/sbhome/)

All proposals to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants were removed from President Obama's small business rescue plan and his Change.gov website. (http://obama.3cdn.net/d14eb1b3649c4d6745_0evzmv02w.pdf, http://change.gov/content/home)

U.S Census Bureau statistics show that firms with fewer than 20 employees account for 90 percent of all U.S. firms and are responsible for more than 97 percent of net new jobs. (http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200708/data.html, http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/30/smallbusiness/job_creation.fsb/index.htm)

If President Obama refuses to make good on his campaign promise to stop the diversion of federal small business contracts to "corporate giants," more small businesses will be forced to close their doors, thousands of middle class jobs will continue to be lost and our economy will be pushed even closer to a depression.

It is time for President Obama to do what he said he would do, and end the Bush Administration policies of fraud and abuse that have already destroyed countless American small businesses and thousands of middle class jobs.

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