Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration

By Jonathan J. Bean

" David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, proclaimed the Small Business Administration a "billion-dollar waste-a rathole," and set out to abolish the agency. His scathing critique was but the latest attack on an agency better known as the "Small Scandal Administration." Loans to criminals, government contracts for minority "fronts," the classification of American Motors as a small business, Whitewater, and other scandals-the Small Business Administration has lurched from one embarrassme

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813121876
• ISBN13: 9780813121871
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.4"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Smoothly Written and Often Amusing Policy History

"In "Big Government and Affirmative Action," Jonathan J. Bean tells the story of the role of small business in the growth of the American state. This compact account is a fine sequel to the author's award winning "Beyond the Broker State: A History of the Federal Government's Policies Toward Small Business, 1936-61" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). It describes the process by which interest-group actors (business groups, congressional committee, and bureaucrats) operate to build nearly indestructible government programs. In addition, the book adds an important dimension to the story of the development of affirmative action. In manifold ways, congressional and bureaucratic policy toward "disadvantaged" businesses adumbrated later policy toward disadvantaged minorities and myriad of other victim groups, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) itself took up minority preferences as its raison d'etre."Jonathan Bean pulls no punches in this nonpartisan look at an agency notorious for corruption. Republicans, he explains, have supported the Small Business Administration to deflect criticism that they are beholden to "big" business, whereas Democrats have supported it to show that they are not "anti-business.""Bean has done a model job in producing a smoothly written and often amusing policy history, and the University Press of Kentucky has done excellent work in editing and publishing it."