Mr, Glover. One of the interesting topics that is being debated 

 in Washington today is whether there is a need for legislation to 

 give special emphasis to small business. I think after almost 30 

 years of discussions about the R&D, we can certainly answer that 

 question yes, in this case. 



In 1967, there was a blue ribbon panel of Government officials 

 convened to study innovation and come up with recommendations. 

 The findings were that small business was the creator of the vast 

 majority of innovations and that the Government had done vir- 

 tually nothing to help them and the Government should do more. 



In 1986, this committee conducted a series of hearings and pub- 

 lished the Studies on Small Business and Innovation, a nice small 

 little book that we did in combination with the Senate Small Busi- 

 ness Committee and we began the process. One of the things we 

 heard from every Government agency was promises that they 

 would do better. They assured us that they were going to do a bet- 

 ter job. 



Shortly after that, as Deputy Chief Counsel at the Office of Advo- 

 cacy working for Milt Stewart, we conducted another focus group 

 and panel initiative report on Small Business and Innovation. After 

 that, the President had a domestic policy review staff. President 

 Carter. The report came back again that if we wanted to encourage 

 innovation, we obviously had to use the most productive sector of 

 economy, small business. The President actually issued a memo- 

 randum directing all agencies to do more for small business. 



In 1982, again this committee began looking at this problem and 

 based on recommendations that came out of the 1980 White House 

 Conference — this was the number six recommendation — was that 

 the SBIR legislation be passed. This committee held hearings and 

 discussed this topic at some length. This is a fairly controversial 

 issue and when it was brought to the floor for a vote it took 2 days 

 of debate and over 30 pages of the Congressional Record. I am 

 pleased to report to you that the bill did obviously pass and the 

 President signed it. 



More interestingly is that this is a bill that had wide bipartisan 

 support, but probably even more interesting is that it had 100 per- 

 cent Republican support, thanks in part to then Ranking Minority 

 Member of this subcommittee, Joe McDade, who fought bravely for 

 this legislation and was able to convince every Republican to vote 

 for it. Given the fact that it was a close vote, that was a fairly sig- 

 nificant factor. 



But let me quote a few of the people who debated this issue at 

 the time, because I think their comments are even more true today. 

 Mr. DeMars from New Hampshire, "SBIR legislation finally gives 

 Federal encouragement to the segment of our economy that pro- 

 vides most of our jobs and innovations." 



Mr. Mitchell of Maryland basically stated, "Presidential direc- 

 tives are ignored. Internal memorandums are not implemented and 

 Congress is given the runaround. After 5 years of Congressional 

 pressure and 5 years of requests by agencies that they be per- 

 mitted to voluntarily implement the good intentions, there has 

 been no change. In fact, the SBA's Office of Economic Research has 

 indicated small business participation has actually declined." 



