Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday April 29, 2024. The moderated conversation focused on investing in historically underserved communities, and building economic opportunity prosperity and wealth that is inclusive. Vice President Harris will be traveling across the country to highlight what the Biden-Harris Administration accomplished to honor commitments, invest in all of America, and create an economy in which every person has the freedom to thrive.
She said that so many innovative, hardworking, ambitious entrepreneurs have incredible aspirations, ideas and vision during a moderated discussion.
While describing entrepreneurs’ positive traits, Vice President Harris also said, “None of that we lack for in the community, but for most folks, we lack access to the resources that will feed those ambitions and those aspirations.”
Vice President Harris discussed the Biden-Harris Administration’s accomplishments including the creation of opportunities for people to build wealth, strengthen their family and strengthen the economy of the community as a whole so everyone in society benefits.
The conversation included raising awareness about access to capital but with a focus also on minority owned businesses; and creation of the Economic Opportunity Coalition, which is committed to aligning major investments in communities of color with investments made by the Biden-Harris Administration.
Vice President Harris added, “We understand that you can’t truly invest in the strength of our nation if you don’t pay attention to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
The Biden-Harris Administration announced that in Fiscal Year 2023, it awarded an all-time high in federal contracts to small businesses across federal agencies. In total, a record-high of $178.6 billion or nearly 30% of all contracting dollars went to small businesses – including those operated by Black Americans.
According to this year’s Small Business Boom Report, key accomplishments include:
The first, second, and third strongest years of new business applications filed on record, with 17.2 million new business applications filed since President Biden took office.
Michael Negron, Special Assistant To The President for National Economic Council, further discussed the sustained small business boom across the country under the Biden-Harris Administration.
Negron told The Baltimore Times that a team of economists who comprise the White House Council of Economic Advisers released an analysis a few months ago that showed that the booming numbers of new business applications are about more than the pandemic bounce back.
“When you compare this rebound to the one around the Great Recession in 2008, we’re not only seeing faster growth, but we’re seeing more signs that these applications are transforming into businesses that hire workers and contribute to the economy,” Negron explained.
Additionally, there is Federal Reserve data that shows that business ownership amongst Black households has doubled since 2019.
“It’s up by 40 percent amongst Latinos since 2019. This is the fastest pace of growth that we’ve seen in three decades,” said Negron.
Negron further explained that the number of small-dollar loans (loans of $150,000 or less) that are offered by the Small Business Administration (SBA) is on track to double this year compared to where it was in 2020.
“That’s important because so many businesses don’t need the $2 million loan, right? They need something much smaller and if they can’t get it from a bank, they’re going to put it on the credit card, they’re going to borrow from their friends, they’re going to take out a second mortgage, or they’re going to go to all these other riskier channels. And that’s why it’s so important to have an SBA-backed option and we really prioritized that and it’s happening, and so we think that’ll help continue this entrepreneurship boom for the coming years.”
Resources for entrepreneurs include www.lending.sba.gov.
“That is where you can go and find a lender that offers an SBA product,” Negron said, also mentioning the SBA website in general.
District offices can serve as a resource to connect small businesses to resources.
“Also released today by the SBA was some data that shows that the number of the amount of contract dollars that went to Black-owned small businesses last year was 10.2 billion. That is an increase of 800 million from 2020, and so that represents continued progress. We still have more work to do. We’re not going to be satisfied until we get that number up, but we want to see things improving and going up, and that’s what the latest data shows,” said Negron.
Also note that entrepreneurs can visit www.transportation.gov and https://www.transportation.gov/osdbu/procurement-assistance/subcontracting-with-dot to learn more about contracting with the Department of Transportation.