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Small Business Action Alert

Alerts from Small Business California

There is raging battle going on in Washington over reauthorization of the Small Business Innovative Research[SBIR] program. Now you are probably saying to yourself this doesn’t affect me but it does indirectly. Read on

The SBIR program directs $2.2 billion annually in Federal grants to small technology businesses across the country.

There is legislation in the House [HR 2965] which would allow venture capital controlled companies to participate in SBIR. With this legislation, Congress is changing the definition of small business to include subsidiaries of multinational corporations and companies majority owned by multi-billion venture capital funds and  other large financial institutions, including foreign institutions to in SBIR. This fundamental change in definition of a small business opens the door to greatly reducing Federal Research and Development grants for companies that have traditionally been defined as small business- those with 500 or fewer employees.

Small businesses which creates most of the private sector jobs and exceed all of the patent filings of research universities currently gets only 4.3% of the Federal R&D grants. Passage of HR 2965 would not only reduce money going to traditional small businesses but because of the increased size of grants reduce the number of grants by 50%. I am urging you to send an  email to Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Speier asking them to oppose this. FYI the Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee has passed S1233 which would not allow this. Congressman Markey and Congresswoman Tsongas will be introducing an amendment tomorrow more friendly to small business

Text of the email to the Congresswomen could be

Dear Speaker Pelosi/Speier

I am a small business owner in San Francisco. There is a bill in the house HR 2965 dealing with reauthorization of the Small Business Innovative Research program which would change the definition of small business to include venture capital firms with more than 500 employees. I urge you to support the Markey/Tsongas amendment.

Sign and make sure your address is included

Please send the Email to Brian Perkins in Jackie Speier’s office Brian.Perkins@mail.house.gov

And Mark Herbert in Speaker Pelosi’s office Mark.Herbert@mail.house.gov

You can send one email to both

If you want the Markey amendment please let me know.

If you want to call the numbers are Speier- Brian Perkins- 650 342-0300

Pelosi- Mark Herbert- 556-4862.

If they are not there leave a message.

Time is of the essence as the vote in the House could be as early as Tuesday. Also I will be meeting  with Speaker Pelosi’s representative with a group of SBIR recipients Tuesday at 10:30

Please, please , take a few moments to write or call. Please send me copy of email or let me know you called.

If they VC’s are successful they have said they want all the SBA programs open to them

Scott Hauge

President

CAL Insurance and Associates, Inc.

2311 Taraval Street

San Francisco, CA  94116

www.cal-insure.com

Phone:  (415) 680-2109

Fax:      (415) 680-2137

“Always looking out for you”

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