During Veterans Small Business Week, Ernst Continues to Push Feds to Fulfill Commitment to Service-Disabled Veteran Small Business Owners

WASHINGTON – During Veterans Small Business Week, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a senior member of the Senate Small Business Committee, is continuing her effort to ensure the federal government fulfills its commitment to awarding veteran-owned small businesses government contracts.

The federal government is currently required to allocate three percent of federal contracts to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOBs), but has failed to meet this goal continuously over the last decade. The SBA found that the federal government failed to meet the overall prime contracting goal for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses for two out of the last ten years, and failed to meet the subcontracting goal for all of the last ten years.

In response, Ernst is announcing her new bipartisan effort, the Service-Disabled Veteran Opportunities in Small Business Act, which requires the Small Business Administration (SBA) to issue publicly available guidance for each agency to meet the current goals for SDVOBs and provide training for each agency that fails to meet these obligations. It also requires an annual report detailing the agencies that fail to meet these goals and the actions put in place to rectify the issue.

“The federal government cannot continue to view its contracting obligation to service-disabled veteran small business owners as a mere suggestion,” said Senator Ernst, a combat veteran. “My effort forces the Small Business Administration to equip federal agencies with the resources and training they need to reach their contracting requirement and uphold their commitment to service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.”

In September, Ernst penned a letter to SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman highlighting these failures and inquiring how the SBA planned to hold agencies accountable for these malfeasances.

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