Sen. Jeanne Shaheen should include an additional provision to the legislation she has been developing to ensure Small Business Administration services are forthcoming for Guards and Reservists (Monitor Business, May 30).
Veteran advocates have been working to see full implementation of the 1999 legislation, PL-106-50, since its passage. Legislation should require the Department of Commerce, Economic and Statistics Administration, Bureau of Census to develop a “universe of population” representative of the actual veterans population engaged in small business, and require veterans’ sample set inclusion in its Characteristics of Business Owners studies.
Currently veterans are only a variable; they are not a sample set as other constituencies are. Accomplishing this would be substantial in providing more accurate data for policy/program discussion.
A Guards and Reserves program that included Census personnel in their planning would constitute important groundwork for construction of a veterans’ “universe of population” – enabling the inclusion of veterans as units of analysis in CBO studies.
SBA actively argued against the 1999 legislation. The VA was totally disengaged. The Office of Management and Budget insisted that no “universe of population” could ever be developed that was representative of veterans in small business, thus no acceptable sample set could be drawn – and by extension veterans could never be a “unit of analysis” as other groups are in any CBO study.
Veterans remain second-class citizens in critical CBO studies.
Paul R. Camacho
Concord