Head of SBA Resigns - What do you think?

Well the head of the SBA resigned this week. Mr. Baretto was the head of the SBA for nearly five years. This is a pretty good length of time compared to prior heads. The thing that concerns me here is that they budget for the SBA is being cut yet Mr. Baretto and the SBA were able to back the largest number of loans ever. This leads me to wonder if the criticism of Mr. Baretto regarding the handling of Hurricane Katrina is justified. It seems Mr. Baretto was fulfilling his mandate to the best of his abilities but was hamstrung in the end by the force of nature, Katrina, and Mr. Bush and the Bush administrations propensity to cut the SBA's budget. Not to mention the fact that Mr. Bush is constantly talking about creating a society where people are able to fend for themselves. If you want people to fend for themselves then you have to create an environment that allows people to pull themselves up. Owning and running a small business is definitely a great way for a person to make their lives better without relying on the government. You might say to me that the SBA is an example of the government fending for people and I would agree with you if they were giving the money away but these are loans that we are talking about here. They are something that the business owner has to pay back. The SBA does more then back loans and, in fact, many of the services are free but they are services that enable a person to succeed not create a dependency on the system by that person. For example there is free training and counseling on running a business. This enables a person to be more successful and to rely on the government less. I congratulate Steven Preston, the new head of the SBA, and wish him luck. Mostly, I hope that he strives to restore the budget of the SBA, leverage that budget as much as possible (following Mr. Baretto's lead) and enable as many American small business owners as he can to succeed. - Doug Kersten Head of Small Business Adminstration Resigns By: Angus Loten "After nearly five years at the helm and facing criticism over Hurricane Katrina recovery, Hector Barreto will be replaced by Steven Preston, an executive at a public company. Hector Barreto, the head of the Small Business Administration, resigned on Tuesday after facing months of criticism over the agency's handling of recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast. Steven Preston, senior vice president at The ServiceMaster Co., a publicly traded firm, is being tapped to replace him, according to a White House statement."