Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved another short-term (60 day) extension of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The Senate is expected to follow suit today. This will be the 8th short-term reauthorization approved by Congress since 2008.

The reauthorization bill does not affect the SBIR/STTR program at the Department of Defense (DoD), which was extended by one year—until Sept. 30, 2010—thanks to the House and Senate Committees Armed Services. For more on that, please click here.

The repeated short-term extensions have wreaked havoc on agencies’ ability to make strategic decisions in regard to the programs, and have failed to provide them with a sufficient level of stability in the eyes of potential participants and investors.

Although full reauthorization bills have passed both the House and Senate, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and the House Committees on Small Business and Science and Technology have not been able to reconcile the differences in their bills.

Opposed to the House reauthorization legislation, NSBA strongly favors the Senate bill and urges the House to accept a reasonable compromise. For more information on those bills, please click here.