Washington, D.C. -- National Small Business Association President Todd McCracken testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship yesterday at a hearing entitled, "Increasing Government Accountability and Ensuring Fairness in Small Business Contracting."

Small-business participation in the federal procurement process is crucial to a healthy and competitive federal procurement process. Small businesses provide high-quality goods and services to federal-contracting agencies and infuse the federal procurement system with much-needed competition.

In turn, the federal government invests in the most-dynamic and innovative sector of the U.S. economy. America's small businesses annually have generated 60-to-80 percent of the country's net new jobs over the last decade.

"America's small businesses lead the nation in net new job creation and innovation," McCracken said during the hearing. "Small businesses also can infuse the federal procurement system with much-needed competition -- but only if they allowed to compete on an even slightly-level playing field. Achieving such a playing field will benefit both the small-business community and the country."

Another huge problem is the fact that large businesses are far too frequently the real recipients and executors of federal contracts intended for small businesses. Up to a third of the U.S. Small Business Administration's list of top 100 small-business contractors in 2005 actually were large businesses, according to a report from Eagle Eye Publishers. And more than 20 percent of the respondents to an NSBA survey reported losing out on a federal procurement opportunity that instead went to a large firm identified as a small business.

The complete text of the testimony is available at nsba.biz/docs/mccracken_testimony_7-18-07.pdf.

For 70 years, NSBA has been an advocate for the interests of small business throughout the country. The organization, which reaches more than 150,000 small businesses, is the nation's oldest small-business advocacy organization.