EXCLUSIVE: At a scheduled House hearing on Wednesday, Republicans plan to grill Small Business Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman over what they have characterized as the agency’s behavior in regard to claims of taxpayer-funded electioneering in swing-state Michigan.
GOP Texas Rep. Roger Williams, chair of the House Small Business Committee, said Monday that Guzman will be asked directly about alleged agency efforts to register voters in Democrat-heavy precincts of the Wolverine State.
“The Small Business Administration has lacked transparency and stonewalled committee oversight at every turn,” Williams said.
“The administrator must answer directly to our members about what we are hearing from our constituents back home, particularly about why small business concerns are being ignored within the Biden-Harris administration …”
Williams and his Senate counterpart, Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, began demanding documents and other information in May over what the SBA had called its “first-ever” voter registration agreement with Michigan officials.
The SBA in March had forged a memorandum of understanding with the Michigan Department of State, pursuant to President Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which promotes access to voting.
Since then, Williams and committee Republicans have been demanding information, including documents and travel schedules of top agency officials. The letter from the two lawmakers also cited Guzman as the “most-traveled” Cabinet member.
To date, the committee has said SBA’s compliance has been markedly insufficient, with lawmakers claiming the agency has “slow-rolled … and wasted time producing documents that were either nonresponsive to the Committee’s requests or duplicative.”
The agency is “diverting its resources away from assisting Main Street so it can register Democratic voters,” Williams said.
In August, an SBA spokesperson argued that the agency has provided “extensive testimony, briefings, transcribed interviews, documents and other information in response to congressional inquires, including the Committee’s most recent subpoena.”
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“We are continuing the work to fulfill the subpoena beyond our initial document production. Any suggestion that the agency is conducting improper work or that its response has been anything other than cooperative is simply not true,” the spokesperson added.
Democrats on the panel, meanwhile, have dismissed the majority’s demands and said their behavior tarnishes the panel’s record.
The House Small Business Committee has otherwise “prided itself in bipartisan cooperation to help American entrepreneurs,” ranking member Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital in June.
“Unfortunately, with [these] subpoenas, Republicans have rejected these principles to pursue a partisan inquiry,” Velazquez said.
However, others have countered that Democrats are politicizing the committee, as a source with knowledge of the committee’s work pointed to at least five derogatory mentions of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 in the committee’s last session.
Velazquez and Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., had invoked the conservative advocacy group’s work to rebut Republican amendments aimed at reducing regulatory burdens on small business.
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Democrats have sought to link Republican officeholders and former President Trump to Project 2025 as a form of criticism. While several of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries and top White House senior aides are authors of the project, Trump has denied having any connection to it.
Williams said that instead of voter registration in Michigan or other related concerns, the SBA should focus on its founding mission.
“The American taxpayers deserve to know the truth about who the SBA is truly working for, because the last few years have been a disaster for Main Street America,” he said Monday.
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Small Business Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman (Bill O’Leary/Pool/Getty Images/File)
Fox News Digital has also learned the committee will question Guzman on the agency’s reported decision to end active collection of COVID-era small business loans under $100,000 while the agency saw billions of loan dollars accidentally go to fraudulent concerns.
The committee also plans to address Vice President Harris’ small business tax deduction proposals and how witnesses may believe it meshes with potential plans to allow a current 20% small business tax deduction to expire.
