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Loeffler Defends the SBA's FY 2026 Budget Before Senate Appropriations, May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025 · PBS NewsHour · 1:17:20

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

What happened

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler testified on May 21, 2025, before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government — Chairman Bill Hagerty presiding, Senator Jack Reed as ranking member — at the hearing titled “A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Small Business Administration.” In her prepared testimony, Loeffler said the budget “reflects our agency’s return to its mission with a clear strategy: streamline services, eliminate waste, and ensure every taxpayer dollar delivers measurable results for America’s small businesses,” consolidating duplicative operations, shifting resources to the SBA’s field offices, and refocusing the agency on its capital access program and its nationwide network of Small Business Development Centers. “It reflects the President’s belief that small businesses are not just part of the economy – they are the engine of it,” she said.

Loeffler told the subcommittee the reorganization moves resources from Washington back into the field and restores underwriting standards and fiscal controls in the SBA’s loan programs, including reinstated lender fees, so the programs operate at what she called zero subsidy for taxpayers. She pointed to rising loan volume under the reforms, saying SBA loan approvals had risen sharply compared with the same period under the prior administration and that loans to the smallest firms had nearly doubled. Ranking Member Reed pressed the agency on consultation: he said the subcommittee had not been briefed after the SBA’s March 21 announcement that it would reduce its workforce by 43%, and members questioned whether consolidations would reduce the counseling and training delivered through partner networks such as the Small Business Development Centers and SCORE. No official-channel full upload of this hearing exists on YouTube; this page embeds the PBS NewsHour livestream of the hearing.

Why it matters

This is Loeffler’s first full defense of the SBA’s new shape before the appropriators who fund it: the budget request, the 43% workforce reduction, and the field-office strategy all meet congressional scrutiny in one sitting. It is the Senate companion to her June 4, 2025 House budget testimony, and the two hearings together form the oversight record for the SBA’s 2025 reorganization.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the FY 2026 SBA budget request and reorganization as defended on May 21, 2025 — including the workforce reduction and the loan-volume figures Loeffler stated — to be checked against the enacted appropriations and SBA reporting as they publish.

Sources: Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, “A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for the Small Business Administration,” May 21, 2025 (hearing as livestreamed by PBS NewsHour, embedded above); Loeffler’s prepared testimony, appropriations.senate.gov. All figures and characterizations as stated by Administrator Loeffler and subcommittee members at the hearing.