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Loeffler Testifies at Her SBA Confirmation Hearing, Jan. 29, 2025

January 29, 2025 · Forbes Breaking News · 1:57:56

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Kelly Loeffler appeared before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on January 29, 2025, for her confirmation hearing as President Trump’s nominee for Administrator of the Small Business Administration. Chair Joni Ernst presided, with Senator Ed Markey as ranking member. Sworn in by the Chair, Loeffler framed her nomination around her private-sector career and her service in the U.S. Senate, committing to serve what she called “America’s 34,000,000 small businesses” — “the opportunity and innovation engines” that drive jobs and economic growth, as she put it in her opening statement.

Loeffler laid out the priorities she said she would pursue if confirmed: cutting regulatory “red tape,” restoring what she called “accountability and transparency” at the agency, and a “zero tolerance” policy on fraud. On disaster relief, she said the SBA must “responsibly and urgently meet the challenge of disaster relief” for communities “from North Carolina to California to Hawaii.” She illustrated the SBA’s lending role with a Georgia example from the pandemic era: the Paycheck Protection Program loan she said she helped Dockside Seafood in Savannah obtain “didn’t just save the restaurant, it saved the jobs of 35 Georgians.” In questioning, she discussed childcare’s impact on small businesses with Senator Rosen and the future of the Veterans Business Outreach Center program, which serves veteran entrepreneurs including the more than 23,000 veteran-owned small businesses Rosen cited in Nevada. No official-channel full upload of this hearing exists on YouTube; the full hearing is carried on C-SPAN’s website, and this page embeds the complete Forbes Breaking News broadcast of the committee’s feed. C-SPAN’s own YouTube channel carries her opening statement as a standalone clip.

Why it matters

This hearing is the founding document of Loeffler’s SBA tenure: the pledges she made here — deregulation, fraud enforcement, disaster-relief urgency, and restored underwriting discipline — are the commitments her later budget testimony and the SBA’s reorganization are measured against on this site. The Senate confirmed her three weeks later, 52–46, on February 19, 2025.

Sources: Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, hearing on the nomination of Kelly Loeffler to be Administrator of the Small Business Administration, January 29, 2025 (full hearing as broadcast by Forbes Breaking News, embedded above; full video also at C-SPAN, c-span.org). Hearing record: S. Hrg. 119–18, U.S. Government Publishing Office. All characterizations as stated by Administrator Loeffler and committee members at the hearing.