The Small Business Administration (SBA)

The United States government is the largest buyer of a wide variety of goods and services in the entire world. According to Ransom (2014), The U.S. government spends approximately $500 billion a year contracting goods and services for civilian employees and our military, including things as simple as office supplies like staplers to more essential items such as bulletproof vests and military clothing and materials, even janitorial services. Small businesses in America help to provide a sizeable amount of these purchases with assistance of the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA was founded on July 30, 1953, and was a derivative of President Herbert Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) that helped America’s small businesses
Today, small businesses are still the backbone of America, providing jobs for locals, creating new and unique products, and also providing additional competition in the market to fuel economic growth. The SBA affects government contracting in a positive way by helping entrepreneurs gain the necessary resources to create and grow their new businesses, ensuring that a fair portion of government contracts are reserved for small businesses, and also by enforcing rules and requirements that help protect the government from waste, fraud and abuse of the small business contracts.
Small businesses need to be able to compete for government contracts. The SBA provides grants and loan programs to small businesses to help them grow
The SBA ensures that 23% of government contracts are set aside for small businesses (SBA). Small Business Programs (2015) states that “acquisitions that have an anticipated dollar value exceeding $3,000, but not over $150,000 are automatically reserved for small businesses as long as there are two companies placing reasonable bids” (FAR). Also, Bame (2015) reports that contracts over $500,000 have to include a small business subcontracting plan so that small businesses can get work under these large contracts. These objectives are mandated in order to help small firms be considered for government contracts. There are several sub goals for smaller programs available under the 23% already allotted for small businesses. In order for businesses to be eligible for the following programs, it must fall into the small business category, and fifty-one percent of the company must be owned and controlled, and managed by one or more of the specific differentiating factor respectively (SBA). These programs