[Podcast] Advocacy Chief Counsel Nominee Remains in Limbo

Posted on | July 13, 2010 | Comments Off

Weekly microbusiness news podcast

Sometimes, Washington still has the power to surprise me.

Take this debacle with the nomination of Dr. Winslow Sargeant. Personally, given that it is not required by statute for the Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy to be a lawyer, Senator Olympia Snowe’s intransigence about it strikes me as being a bit unreasonable … even irrational.

-ahem-

Do you really have to be a lawyer in order to go to bat for small businesses that are regularly browbeaten by federal regulations? I wouldn’t have thought so, not when there are attorneys on staff at Advocacy and when the real experts on the subject are small business owners on those Advocacy panels I keep hearing about.

On the Senate floor, Senator Mary Landrieu mentioned that when the economy is in the sort of shambles it’s in right now, this is not the time to withhold any sort of resource for small businesses — including their very own advocate within the federal government.

She’s right. And, just between us, I sure hope they get this resolved soon!

So, in other news … anybody taking bets on whether the federal budget will get cobbled together, passed by both the House and the Senate, and all 12 bills signed into law before the close of the fiscal year on September 30th?

Nah, I didn’t think so.

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