Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

25. Small Business Administration · Minor

Confine the SBA to congressionally authorized programs

Partially done

750 25. Small Business Administration

“Under a conservative Administration, success would yield: … A tighter, more focused SBA that concentrates on congressionally authorized programs.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A second agency-wide reorganization consolidated technology, finance, human-resources, legal and disaster functions into centers of excellence, reporting a workforce reduction of over 50% and a 33% cut in the operating budget across 2025. The same release also *establishes* two new offices — a Faith Office and an Office of Rural Affairs — neither created by statute, which cuts against the ask.

  2. Partially done

    The FY2027 President's Budget asks Congress for a $671 million (67%) cut to the SBA and the elimination of the entrepreneurial development programs, naming SCORE and the Community Navigator Pilot Program. That is a formal administration request to shrink the agency, but it asks Congress to end programs Congress created rather than to stop activity Congress never authorized.

  3. Partially done

    The agency-wide reorganization announced under EO 14210 cut the SBA workforce by 43% and was framed as ending "the expansive social policy agenda of the prior Administration" and returning the agency to "its founding mission" — naming the Green Lender Initiative, the Community Navigator Pilot Program and DEI activities as the growth to be reversed. It refocuses the agency but does not confine it to congressionally authorized programs: the Community Navigator Pilot Program was itself authorized by Congress in the American Rescue Plan.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Leveled partial rather than done: the agency is materially smaller and has dropped initiatives it created administratively (the Green Lender Initiative), but “concentrates on congressionally authorized programs” is not delivered while the SBA is standing up new offices of its own (Faith Office, Office of Rural Affairs, the Office of Manufacturing and Trade) and while the programs it is shedding are ones Congress authorized.
  • The FY2027 Budget’s elimination of the entrepreneurial-development programs is the same instrument that bears on #2071 (p. 758, outside this page range) and #2036. Flagged for the ticket-26 consistency pass so the three are leveled together.
Action
restrict
Object
SBA programs not authorized by Congress
ID
2032