Hirono, Markey press SBA administrator on audit targeting underserved businesses

US Sens. Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaiʻi and Ed Markey (D-MA) sent a letter to US Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, expressing their deep concerns regarding the US SBA’s Dec. 5 announcement of a sweeping, program-wide audit of the 8(a) Business Development Program.

“SBA’s announcement has left many businesses scrambling to meet the agency’s extensive document requested under a short deadline with unclear guidance, while raising concerns about how businesses’ information will be used and secured,” the senators said.

The 8(a) Business Development Program was created by Congress to provide training, assistance, and federal contracting opportunities for socially and economically disadvantaged businesses in the US and plays an important role in helping to ensure these businesses have the opportunity to work with federal agencies.

These small, socially and economically disadvantaged businesses, often rely on government contracts to stay in business and keep their staff employed.

“While we wholeheartedly support meaningful oversight of all programs that fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, we disagree with your characterization of the program,” the senators wrote. “We also emphasize that formal audits should be conducted by the appropriate authorities, such as Inspectors General, who are a part of a comprehensive system that has decades of proven success in preventing and detecting fraud, waste and abuse.”

The ambiguous language in the SBA’s audit has led to mass confusion among 8(a) businesses, who have been seeking clarity and guidance regarding the documentation they must provide to remain eligible to participate in the 8(a) program.

“Furthermore, we are concerned about the nature in which you requested the information from businesses in the program—an indiscriminate data call asking 4,300 businesses to complete additional paperwork, with limited guidance to clarify the manner in which they should comply—which raises questions,” the senators continued. “So too does the short turnaround, initially giving businesses only 31 days to comply with a deadline of Jan. 5, 2026—shortly after the holiday season—before extending the deadline to Jan. 19, 2026.”

To that end, the lawmakers demand answers to a number of specific questions about the audit by Jan. 2, 2025, including:

1. How should a business doing classified and/or sensitive work for the federal government provide the agency with the requested information in a timely and appropriate manner before the requested deadline?
2. Will extensions be granted for businesses that make a good faith effort to comply with the deadline, especially if there is no feasible way to provide the information before the deadline?
3. What assurances do businesses have that proprietary information shared with the agency will be protected?
4. Who within the agency will conduct the audit of the program?
5. Will the agency follow government-approved standards to conduct investigations or audits, such as the Government Accountability Office’s “Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS)?”

“SBA’s fundamental mission is to support small businesses and entrepreneurs in the United States,” the lawmakers concluded. “Rather than using this audit as a pretense to unfairly attack a program with which you have an ideological disagreement, it is our hope that you will refocus on the goals of the 8(a) Program to make sure it continues to support socially and economically disadvantaged businesses—as intended.”

In addition to Sens. Hirono and Markey, the letter was also signed by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

The full text of the letter is available here.