WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Congressman Roger Williams (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, held a hearing titled "From Startup to Scale: The Role of the SBA Office of Investment and Innovation in Powering America's Small Businesses" to examine how the SBA Office of Investment and Innovation connects small businesses to the research, funding, and support they need to compete in our fast-changing economy.

"Since Administrator Kelly Loeffler took over the U.S. Small Business Administration last year, the agency has delivered historic results for Main Street," said Chairman Williams. "At the heart of that work is the Office of Investment and Innovation (OII), which is mobilizing private capital for our manufacturers and innovators and turning federally funded research into the technologies our workers depend on. Most importantly, capital is flowing into small businesses at a record pace under Administrator Loeffler’s leadership! With an America First agenda driving the SBA, there has never been a better time to start and grow a business in this country."

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Watch the full hearing here.

Below are some key excerpts from today’s hearing:

Chairman Williams: “Mr. Carter, since Administrator Loeffler was sworn in to office, OII has seen record SBIC performance, a modernized regulatory framework, and two pieces of bipartisan legislation signed into law. That record is difficult to match. In your view, how have the Trump Administration’s priorities translated into concrete results for small businesses through OII’s programs under Administrator Loeffler?” Mr. Carter: “Thank you, Chairman. I’ve been so honored to work with Administrator Loeffler and under President Trump and Administrator Loeffler’s leadership. She’s focused on the key themes, the matter for our country at this time. Number one: reindustrialization of America. Number two: strengthening our supply chain choke points and increasing their resilience. Number three: continue to advance the technology—the adoption of technology, advance technology, and the commercialization of it. And it’s been incredible to see already the impacts that it’s had. Just this last year, for 2025, about 44% of our SBIC portfolio was in the industrials category, which is made up principally of manufacturing. We’ve seen incredible support from the funds as we’ve focused on this, and we’ve seen 3 billion last year, just in that sector in the SBIC program. What’s so powerful is when you actually look at the individual company impact, right? It’s all about the small businesses and the entrepreneurs. We found an example in your home state of Texas—Cleburne. There’s a cement wall manufacturer that’s there that received SBIC funding, and you look at those individual situations, and that’s what this program is all about.”

Rep. Meuser: “Onto the SBIC programs, 53 billion dollars of combined private capital, the largest amount in the program’s 67-year history, so congratulations to you there. Your flagship program is the SBIC program, which, by the way, is run tremendously well by some people in this room. So we appreciate that. With the All of America plan and the increases in the Investing in All of America Act, focused on rural areas, tech, and manufacturers. Tell us how that legislation has allowed you to serve more of where it was intended to serve and support loans.” Mr. Carter: “Again, I just want to thank this body. Thank you for sponsoring and Congresswomen Scholten for sponsoring. It’s an incredible bill. I know it’s been worked on for years, and many folks in this room have been very focused on it. I think it’s brilliant. You look at what’s happened. You can look at CPI, but you can also look at the Russell 2000… It’s gone up, 90% since 2015. So if you just think about in like purchasing power that our funds have, it’s 90% lower had you not done this. So, it was huge, and to me, the brilliance is the bonus leverage. It’s a way that we’re providing capital, but our country has such a need right now to reindustrialize. We’re in a geo-economic competition against very strong adversaries that think in decades and have been doing this for 30 years, and hollowing out our manufacturing base. You create an incentive for them to invest in manufacturing, critical technologies, rural, etc., and its economic impact. It’s economic, it’s rational, and it’s scaling the investors that are professional investors as opposed to us picking all the companies ourselves. It’s brilliant.”

Rep. Fuller: “One of the things that I want to celebrate is President Trump and Administrator Loeffler and the work that you’re doing. For far too long, investment capital stayed on the East and West Coasts—it didn’t go into Appalachian communities like mine and what I represent. So, if you can expound on how your leadership and the work you’ve been doing and how you have been getting capital into underserved communities, like in Appalachia?” Mr. Carter: “Thank you for that great question and for the story. Again, it’s been really fun. I went through all of your districts and had my team help me identify companies in those districts that have benefited from our programs. We see Dalton, Georgia…. There’s a plant-based compounds company that is manufacturing compounds for Type 2 diabetes. Again, this China theme, like American-made critical raw materials, we know the pharmaceutical base. Ingredients have been totally like—we invented them, and now they are over there. It’s brilliant what’s happening in Dalton, Georgia. Again, these programs are incredible because they’re accessible to a kid in a garage, or they’re accessible to the Torrance, California firms that I met with that are R&D companies that use the SBIR program to generate incredible innovations that VC is not going to invest in.  VC is not going to invest in a repair—an old part for the F35—that this team can update and do using the SBIR program. Again, SBICs, we got them spread across the country. We’re working urgently to expand that. We don’t lower our standards. It’s been zero subsidies since 1990. Our teams are phenomenal—the people, the process, the way they do due diligence, the way they monitor, the way they examine—we’re not lowering our standards. That’s not what this is, but we’re working aggressively to double, triple, quadruple this program so that we can get more capital out to the small businesses across our country that need it, not just on the Coast.”

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