SBA Veterans Assistance Programs: An Analysis of Contemporary Issues.

Several federal agencies, including the Small Business Administration (SBA), provide training and other assistance to veterans seeking civilian employment. For example, the Department of Defense (DOD), in cooperation with the SBA, Department of Labor, Department of Veterans Affairs, and several other federal agencies, operates the Transition Goals Plans Success program (Transition GPS), which provides employment information and entrepreneurship training to exiting military servicemembers to assist them in transitioning from the military to the civilian labor force. In recent years, the unemployment rate among veterans as a whole has generally been similar to or lower than the unemployment rate for nonveterans 18 years and older. However, veterans who have left the military since September 2001 have experienced higher unemployment than other veterans and, in some years, higher unemployment than nonveterans. As a result, Congress has focused much of its attention on finding ways to assist veterans who have left the military since September 2001. The SBA provides management and technical assistance services to more than 100,000 veterans each year through its various management and technical assistance training partners (e.g., Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers [WBCs], SCORE [formerly the Service Corps of Retired Executives], and Veterans Business Outreach Centers [VBOCs]). The SBA's Office of Veterans Business Development (OVBD) also administers several programs to assist veterans, including the Operation Boots to Business: From Service to Startup initiative, which is part of DOD's Transition GPS program. The expansion of federal employment training programs targeted at specific populations, such as women and veterans, has led some Members and organizations to ask if these programs should be consolidated. In their view, eliminating program duplication among federal business assistance programs across federal agencies, and within the SBA, would result in lower costs and improved services. Others argue that keeping these business assistance programs separate enables them to offer services that match the unique needs of various underserved populations, such as veterans. In their view, instead of considering program consolidation as a policy option, the focus should be on improving communication and cooperation among the federal agencies providing assistance to entrepreneurs. This report opens with an examination of the economic circumstances of veteran-owned businesses. It then provides a brief overview of veterans' employment experiences, comparing unemployment and labor force participation rates for veterans, veterans who have left the military since September 2001, and nonveterans. The report also describes employment assistance programs offered by several federal agencies to assist veterans in their transition from the military to the civilian labor force and examines, in greater detail, the SBA's veteran business development programs, the SBA's efforts to assist veterans' access to capital, and the SBA's service-disabled veteran-owned (SDVOSB) federal procurement program. It also discusses the SBA's Military Reservist Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and P.L. 114-38, the Veterans Entrepreneurship Act of 2015, which authorized and made permanent, under specified circumstances, the SBA's recent practice of waiving the SBAExpress loan program's one time, up-front loan guarantee fee for veterans (and their spouses). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]