House Small Business Committee's CLOSED Mic

The majority site for the House Small Business Committee is called "Open Mic". A better name perhaps would be "Censored Mic: tell us only what we want to hear."

On September 23 I posted a couple comments. My comment on the main page, regarding SBIR reauthorization has never been posted. When I called, a staffer explained that they get many postings, and not all are open for the public to view. Huh? I thought it was called "open mic". I guess you have a different understanding of that term. Surely, they have a right and responsibility to keep discussions on topic. But to censor views that don't support their portrayal of things is a bit beyond the pale.

The other comment I posted on the "feedback" page regarding the high cost and uneven burden of health insurance for small companies, garnered the following response:

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Not quite what I was hoping for. So, I resubmitted the comment on their main page. Still no posting. A week later, I resubmitted a somewhat extended and specific version of my SBIR reauthorization comments on their resources page summary of H.R. 1425, which presents an incomplete and misleading depiction of the actual bill. For your edification, despite the actions of the House Small Business Committee, I append that September 29 comment and my suggestion for dealing with small business health insurance below. You can judge for yourselves whether they warrant censorship.

SBIR Reathorization

We need long-term or permanent reauthorization of SBIR. The Senate had called for 14 years, then compromised for 8. No shorter! The three year reauthorization in HR 1425 (section 101) is woefully short. It takes more than three years for a single review and award cycle for Phase I and Phase II. Small businesses and agencies need the certainty of a long term reauthorization in order to develop crucial innovations.

We need SBIR to be retained as it was intended: to spur innovation and business creation. That means, there should be no softening of the small business definition criteria and no accommodation for businesses majority owned and controlled by any entity other than individuals or another small business(sections 106/107). No large venture capital-owned businesses (no hedge funds/no private equity); no large corporation subsidiaries. This is needed to ensure cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars to support innovations, business and job creation, while cutting out the middlemen. "Financial structure" matters!

SBIR should be expanded to reflect the value of small innovative businesses, which employ 40% of American tech workers. We currently receive a mere 4% of federal contracts and grants. The percent allocations for SBIR should be increased from 2.5%. A reasonably conservative figure would be 5% of agencies' budgets for SBIR. As a minimum the Senate (S. 493) compromise of increasing SBIR from 2.5% to 3.5% over ten years should be adapted.

There should be absolutely no loopholes created for bypassing Phase I (section 105). Period. Small dollar (~$100-150k) Phase I awards are necessary to ensure that the program continues to seed the earliest stage, high value/high risk/high reward ideas, without overextending the federal government's commitments. Phase I allows risk to be mitigated, while providing capital for early stage ideas that have nowhere else to get funding!

Thousands of businesses, tens of thousands of patents, hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on the House Small Business Committee doing what's right for SBIR and the nation. We depend on you not to cave into to special interests. SBIR needs to be maintained as a merit-based driver of innovation, problem solving, and job and business creation and growth. It has succeeded in this for over a quarter century. No more compromises.

Small Business Health Insurance

Here is a simple idea to benefit small businesses and their employees, and to simplify the burden on insurance company actuaries. Here is a new regulation that would simplify things, while providing for a more fair distribution of health care costs among the population.

Require that health insurance providers establish rates by geographic region and other broad demographic measures, rather than by the size of the employee pool at a particular company. It is absurd that the premiums charged per employee are two or three times the rates that would be charged for the exact same employee if they walked across the street to work for a company with 800. If rates were determined fairly, without regard to the size of the company pool, my rates would drop substantially, allowing me to continue providing coverage, while rates per employees at large corporations would barely nudge upward. It would be a fair distribution of rates, reflecting the actual risk factors per individual, and would even the playing field, so small businesses could compete on an equal footing with large companies for the same quality employees, without having to gouge their own bottom lines.