Small Businesses Urge Congress to Pass Ernst’s INNOVATE Act

WASHINGTON - After Democrats blocked Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Joni Ernst's (R-Iowa) INNOVATE Act, 35 small business owners and tech leaders from across the country urged Congressional leaders to support the legislation that reforms and reauthorizes the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs that provide funding for the development of critical technology supporting America's national security.

The letter detailed how the INNOVATE Act will prioritize our warfighters by enacting long-overdue reforms to ensure funding goes to the best and brightest companies producing usable technology, and not serial grant writers just producing policy white papers.

"As a country, we no longer have the luxury to indulge such smug, self-interested dealing at the heart of a fragile defense-industrial base. We are simply out of time for incremental policy changes and continued deference to an ecosystem that deserves neither. We therefore write in support of the critical reforms proposed in the INNOVATE Act (H.R. 4777). The legislation makes important improvements to ensure that award dollars go to real entrepreneurs and innovators, not those playacting as ones," wrote the stakeholders.

Click here to view the letter.

Background:

Days before Senate Democrats blocked Ernst's bill that enacts safeguards to protect intellectual property from Chinese espionage, the Pentagon agreed that American innovation produced through the SBIR and STTR programs is vulnerable to foreign espionage.

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