Olympia Snowe: “my colleague Senator Landrieu and I have an amendment to remove inequities that exist in the women-owned small business…”

“my colleague Senator Landrieu and I have an amendment to remove inequities that exist in the women-owned small business contracting program, when compared to other socioeconomic programs. As former chair and now ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I have long championed women entrepreneurship and have urged both past and present administrations to implement the woman-owned small business, WOSB, Federal contracting program, which was enacted into law 10 years ago. On March 4, 2010, the Small Business Administration, SBA, finally proposed a workable rule to implement the women's procurement program. And I am pleased to report that today there is a functional WOSB contracting program, however, the program lacks the critical elements that the SBA's 8(a), historically underutilized business zones, and the service-disabled veteran-owned government contracting programs include. To remedy this, our bipartisan amendment will help provide tools women need to compete fairly in the Federal contracting arena by eliminating a restriction on the dollar amount of a contract that a WOSB can compete for, thus putting them on a level playing field with the other socioeconomic contracting programs. Women-owned small businesses have yet to receive their fair share of the Federal marketplace. In fact, our government has never achieved its goal of 5 percent of contracts going to WOSBs, achieving only 3.98 percent in fiscal year 2011.…”