Meet Mary Landrieu, Senate Small Business Leader

Part 1 of our 2-part special report on government and small business. To hear from Sam Graves, head of the House Small Business Committee, click here.

With American politics becoming increasingly partisan, it’s more and more difficult to straddle the aisle in Congress. But Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat hailing from one of the most famous political families in the Bayou State, is known for her centrist, conciliatory style -- which she brings to her role as chair of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, formerly known as the Senate Select Committee on Small Business.

Though Landrieu enjoys a good working relationship with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, the ranking Republican member on the committee, partisan rancor continues to grow in the Senate overall, and the debate over repealing President Obama’s signature health care law has only sharpened people’s views.

Landrieu played a leading role in helping the White House pass its small business jobs bill last year and was singled out by President Obama for getting the votes needed on the Senate floor.

But some conservative small business organizations, including the National Federation of Independent Businesses, criticized Landrieu for not using the small business jobs bill to get rid of a 1099 tax requirement that imposes sizable burdens on small companies.

"Today the Senate had an opportunity to repeal a huge paperwork burden for all small businesses, but once again, politics trumped helping small business," Susan Eckerly, senior vice president of the NFIB, said at the time.

The National Small Business Association, another major small business group, gave Landrieu a middling rating of only 50 percent at one point, in part because it viewed her as sometimes too sympathetic to the positions of larger corporations.

In fact, Landrieu lacks personal experience in small business, although Louisiana’s economy is based heavily on small companies, so she had experience dealing with many entrepreneurs well before becoming committee chair in 2009.

Other small businesses, meanwhile, have praised Landrieu for her strong advocacy since becoming chair. Besides the small business jobs act, Landrieu has championed women, veteran, and minority small businesspeople, and she has also made revitalizing Louisiana’s smaller companies, devastated by natural disasters, a top priority.

AllBusiness asked the senator -- via e-mail -- about her priorities for the new Congress, the challenges of working in the contested political environment, and her connections with small companies:

AllBusiness: What are your overall top priorities for the committee in this Congress, and how much do you see the results of the midterm elections impacting those priorities?

Sen. Landrieu: The Senate Small Business Committee has traditionally worked in a bipartisan manner to help America’s small businesses succeed. As such, the midterm elections are not expected to significantly alter the committee’s work or impact my priorities. In general, I have sought to make Small Business Administration a strong federal partner for small business interests, streamline SBA administration and improve quality of SBA programs, and encourage SBA to better coordinate with other federal agencies on behalf of small businesses.

Within those goals, my priorities have included encouraging access to credit markets for small businesses and increasing small business lending, conducting oversight of federal contracting and business counseling programs that benefit minority entrepreneurs, and increasing opportunities for small businesses to export products.

AllBusiness: Federal contracting obviously is a major issue for small businesses. What do you plan to do to ensure that federal agencies contract in a transparent manner and afford opportunities to women-owned and minority-owned small companies?

Landrieu: Every government agency with procurement authority has an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) to advocate within the agency for firms that are small, [disadvantaged], 8(a), woman-owned, HUBZone, or service-disabled veteran-owned.

These offices are the first line of defense within each agency to ensure that small business goals are being appropriately set and met. I plan to ensure that the OSDBUs at each federal agency are being properly resourced and supported at the highest levels. To accomplish this, I will publicly investigate the roles and responsibilities of the OSDBU director, the functions conducted by the OSDBU, and the actions taken by the OSDBU and other agency officials to further small business contracting opportunities and how funding and staff levels affect these efforts.

Making sure that the OSDBU within each agency is properly supported is one of the best ways to ensure that small businesses get their fair share of contracts and be given the same opportunities as larger organizations.

AllBusiness: Now that the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is moving closer to finalization, to be possibly followed by other stalled trade deals, how can the government best increase small companies' knowledge of trade and access to foreign markets?

Landrieu: For small businesses that have never exported, the prospect of selling their goods and services in a foreign market can seem daunting. But it’s not impossible, even in emerging markets like South Korea. In fact, according to the Department of Commerce, 88 percent of the businesses that currently export to South Korea are actually small businesses. Clearly there is a lot of opportunity there.

But the key to increasing small business participation in exporting is education. As I’ve traveled around Louisiana meeting with entrepreneurs and small business owners, I’ll often ask them if they’ve ever thought of exporting as a way to expand their business. And the overwhelming majority will say no, they haven’t. It’s just never occurred to them to do that.

But with 96 percent of the world’s customers located outside our borders, it’s a huge missed opportunity. So ultimately, we need to do a better job educating the small business community from day one about the opportunities available to them in foreign markets, as well as creating a better awareness of the array of federal and local resources available to them.

I’ve been working closely with the [Obama] administration to improve their outreach efforts, raise awareness of federal export assistance programs, and more generally, improve the ability of small businesses to access foreign markets.

AllBusiness: Specifically on the trade question, do you think that the current SBA and Commerce programs designed to help companies enter new markets are effectively tailored for small companies? Very few small companies take advantage of these programs.

Landrieu: There are currently a wealth of federal programs available to help small businesses export their goods and services to foreign markets. They can help small businesses with just about any problem they might encounter during the exporting process. Unfortunately, under the previous administration many of these programs were neglected or underfunded, and as a result, they no longer meet the needs of the small business community.

I along with Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. LeMieux worked together to include provisions in the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, updating and increasing funding in support of many of both the SBA’s and Department of Commerce’s exporting programs. I am also encouraged by the administration’s efforts as part of the National Export Initiative (NEI) to review, update, and modernize many of these programs, ensuring that they truly meet the needs of our small businesses.

AllBusiness: You’ve said you want to put a higher priority on programs that provide counseling and training for small companies. But how do you want to implement these goals? There are already a wide range of counseling programs in various agencies that are designed to help startups.

Landrieu: I recognize the critical role that the SBA’s technical assistance and counseling programs play in helping small business grow, create jobs, and strengthen the economy. These programs are not only effective, but critical in moving this country out of the current uncertain economic climate. To that end, in the last Congress, I introduced the Entrepreneurial Development Act of 2009 (S. 1229), which reauthorizes programs already codified under the Small Business Act and increases the funding for entrepreneurial development programs.

Ranking Member Olympia Snowe and I also sought additional funding for Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), SBA’s largest technical assistance and counseling provider. SBDCs give small business owners the direction to take advantage of the other programs/provisions included in the Small Business Jobs Act. This additional funding was included in the final Small Business Jobs Act that was ultimately signed by the president on September 27 of last year.

To hear from Sam Graves, head of the House Small Business Committee, click here.