SBA Hot Topic Tuesday— Reauthorization Bill Causes Deadlock in the Senate

August 13, 2019

By Caity Witucki
Contributing Editor, SBA Hot Topic Tuesday

SBA Hot Topic Tuesday— Reauthorization Bill Causes Deadlock in the Senate

Efforts to approve a reauthorization bill in the Senate’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship has been delayed due to disagreement over broader regulatory relief. Members of the committee hope to make a decision regarding the reauthorization bill before approving a budget for the SBA’s 2020 fiscal year.

John Reosti, a journalist for the American Banker, discussed the deadlock on the Coleman Report Live. According to Reosti, “The plan was to strengthen the office of advocacy, make it an independent agency, and give it the power to question whether agencies had done rigorous enough analysis of regulations that they wanted to put forward and their analysis of the impact on small businesses.”

Reosti explained, the House appropriated money to fund a subsidy for the 7(a) programs for the fiscal year 2020 and is pressing forward with a study on the subsidy mechanism. However, there was a holdup in the Senate. Some objections developed toward the end of July about the regulatory relief provisions that senator Rubio included in the reauthorization. The committee reached an impasse when Democrats began to fear that might be giving small businesses too much say in regulatory development.

According to Reosti, the impasse will probably be resolved at the last minute. The Senate is in recess now and will not return until the first week of September. Therefore, the Senate will have three to four weeks to settle the disagreement before the October 1st deadline.

In the Coleman Report Live, Reosti said that he remains optimistic about the future of the SBA 7(a) loan program because the Senate understands how important it is and they are continuing to go through the reauthorization process.