Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, the Brooklyn Democrat who serves as ranking member of the House Small Business Committee, accused Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler of “offensive, extremist” rhetoric against minority entrepreneurs in a statement her office released on January 22.
Velázquez said she was responding to new guidance and what she called inflammatory comments from Loeffler regarding the 8(a) Business Development Program, a federal program that helps socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses compete for government contracts. According to Velázquez’s statement, Loeffler said that morning that the government “hands out billions… to favored minorities at the direct expense of honest small businesses,” language Velázquez characterized as harming “legitimate job creators, especially white men.”
“In other words, she is saying that small businesses can be either minority-owned or honest and legitimate,” Velázquez said in the statement. “This is offensive, extremist, and antithetical to the mission of the SBA—an agency she is unfit to lead.”
Velázquez’s office said the administrator has spent months attacking small businesses with “inflammatory rhetoric, dog whistles, and inaccurate characterizations of small business entrepreneurs and the SBA’s own programs.” The congresswoman said in the statement that Loeffler is “now regularly asserting that minority entrepreneurs are criminals, while providing no evidence to support those claims, and attempting to depress small business opportunities.”
Velázquez represents New York’s 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Brooklyn, and has been a longtime member of the Small Business Committee. The statement was issued by the committee’s Democratic staff and did not include a response from Loeffler or the SBA.
