25. Small Business Administration · Notable · Needs Congress

Expand the agency R&D set-aside for SBIR

Not started

Printed page 755 25. Small Business Administration

“Urge Congress to expand the amount that other agencies are required to set aside from their general R&D budgets for the SBIR program.”

What has happened

Apr 13, 2026 Not started
Congress reauthorized SBIR and STTR to 2031 and left the set-aside percentages exactly where they were. Public Law 119-83 amends 15 U.S.C. 638 in ten sections and touches subsection (f)(1) only to define a "strategic breakthrough allocation" carved *out of* the existing SBIR allocation — "an expenditure amount from the SBIR allocation under subsection (f)(1) of such agency of not more than 0.50 percent of the extramural budget" — and §9(b) to let unspent FY2026 set-aside money be carried into FY2027. Neither the 3.2% SBIR set-aside nor the 0.45% STTR set-aside is raised. The bill that would do what the Quote asks, H.R. 3169 (SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2025, §201, stepping the SBIR set-aside to 4% in FY2026–27 and on to 7%, and the STTR set-aside to 0.5% and on to 1%), was referred to committee on 2025-05-01 and never reported. No administration request to raise the set-aside was found in the FY2027 Budget or in the SBA's statements on the reauthorization.
- Public Law 119-83, Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act (S. 3971)
  Primary Congress Apr 13, 2026
- H.R. 3169, SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2025, as introduced — §201 would raise the SBIR set-aside to 4–7% and the STTR set-aside to 0.5–1%
  Primary Congress May 1, 2025

Research log

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

Research notes

§3b: progress is measured on this ask. The reauthorization is a large enactment on the same object that deliberately does not contain the ask, which is a stronger negative than silence — Congress legislated on 15 U.S.C. 638 and left the percentages alone. Attached as Evidence to the not started event under §3b’s “moved the other way” convention.
Negative search: grep over the enacted text of P.L. 119-83 for 3.2, 0.45, extramural budget and subsection (f)(1) — the only hits are the strategic-breakthrough carve-out and the carry-over provision; Corpus bills.ndjson for SBIR and STTR — eleven bills, of which only H.R. 3169 / S. 1573 changes the percentages, and neither moved.
The Quote asks the administration to urge Congress. Nothing in the SBA’s 2026-04-13 release, the FY2027 Budget’s SBA chapter or the FY2027 CBJ asks for a larger set-aside.

Action: expand
Object: SBIR set-aside percentage of federal agency extramural R&D budgets
ID: 2057