Salazar Grills Top Biden Administration Official on Poor SBA Agency Audit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) grilled Isabel Guzman, Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA), over its annual KPMG audit report showing major failures at the SBA under Guzman’s tenure at a House Small Business Committee hearing.

Businesses in the private sector work hard to ensure they receive a clean audit report to avoid getting in trouble. The federal government ought to do the same.

“Unfortunately, KPMG found inadequate loan process reviews, poor record-keeping, and legal compliance issues at President Biden’s Small Business Administration,” said Rep. Salazar. “Administrator Guzman has been at the SBA for three years and is not willing to own responsibility for its issues.”

This damning report recommending 55 management fixes comes on the heels of another report by the Small Business Administration’s Inspector General showing more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans disbursed through the COVID Economic Injury and Disaster Loans (EIDL) program. Administrator Isabel Guzman responded with a competing report the same day the Inspector General’s was released claiming only $36 billion of these loans were fraudulent.

Congresswoman Salazar is working hard to ensure taxpayer funds that are spent fraudulently are returned to the American people. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed Salazar’s Returning Erroneous COVID Loans Addressing Illegal and Misappropriated (RECLAIM) Taxpayer Funds Act in November 2023, and the Biden Administration subsequently implemented it in December 2023.

To watch the Congresswoman’s full line of questioning at the hearing, click here.

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