WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Committee on Small Business is holding a full committee hearing titled “Holding the SBA Accountable: Testimony from Small Business Administrator Guzman.”

Chairman Roger Williams’ opening statement as prepared for delivery:

Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing which will focus on oversight over the Small Business Administration.

This hearing could not come at a more important time, as our Committee’s list of questions for you, Administrator, grows. Throughout the 118th Congress, our Committee has taken our oversight duties very seriously. The agency was charged with distributing over $1.2 trillion dollars in COVID assistance and is supposed to be looking out for the best interest of America’s job creators, so this is not a responsibility we can simply ignore. Unfortunately, over these last 2 years, the SBA has stonewalled and delayed many of our investigations, slow rolling document production and failed to produce substantive responses to the Committee’s requests.

This lack of transparency has been extremely troubling. Congress is charged with the power of the purse, and it does not give us confidence that we can allocate taxpayer dollars to you if we cannot receive timely answers when we think they are being misused. If we have policy differences, that is fine. We should be able to look at all the information and come to different conclusions. However, when information is being withheld from us, it gives us little confidence and diminishes the credibility of your entire agency. But we are going to continue fighting and we will get the information we need one way or the other.

One of the Committee’s largest concerns is the SBA’s decision to enter a Memorandum of Understanding with the State of Michigan to help register voters ahead of the election. Not only is this far outside the scope of what the Small Business Administration should be engaged in, but federal agencies shouldn’t be using taxpayer resources to insert themselves into our elections process.

Since March, the Committee has been requesting documents from the SBA relating to this MOU, and last night at 9:00pm, the SBA gave us almost 2,000 documents relating to this request. My staff is going through them as we speak, but this type of gamesmanship is ridiculous. This last-minute document dump is what we have come to expect from your agency. Instead of putting forward a good faith effort to adhere to Congressional oversight, you wait until the last minute so we won’t have time to go through what you produced so we can ask you meaningful questions.

Aside from playing partisan politics in Michigan, the SBA has many things to answer for about their decisions to alter many of their lending programs. Early last year, your agency reduced the prudent lending standards within the SBA’s flagship 7(a) Loan Program. While the SBA has touted that it has made more loans to American small businesses, we have learned that data from the SBA lender portal indicates the early default rate has tripled since the prudent lending standards were stripped in the 2023 Biden-Harris’ SBA policy changes. While the SBA has been operating on the platform that more is better, we must ask – is “more” really better when we are strapping borrowers with unsustainable amounts of debt?

Administrator, your agency has proven they’re unwilling or unable to produce documents responsive to the Committee’s requests and has worked to undermine the Committee’s investigations into various areas of the agency. Today, we look forward to receiving clarity on the delay and dismissal of our requests. As I have said many times before, we want to work with, not against the SBA to help Main Street.

Our nation’s small businesses are facing brutal economic headwinds, and it is our job to ensure they have a fighting chance at success. Small business optimism remains at lows not seen since the pandemic. Inflation remains a top concern, and there has been little improvement as employers are looking to fill job openings. Additionally, America’s job creators have been straddled with more regulations than they can handle.

Administrator Guzman, I want to thank you again for being here with us today, and I am looking forward to today’s conversation. I hope that today’s hearing will provide a pathway for the SBA to get back on track.

With that I will yield to our distinguished Ranking Member from New York, Ms. Velázquez.

###