How the Small Businesses Investment Company Program can better support America’s advanced industries

On June 26, Brookings Metro Senior Fellow and Policy Director Mark Muro testified to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship about the need for the reauthorization of the Small Business Administration (SBA), and particularly on the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program, to be better positioned to further support America’s advanced industry sector.

Specifically, Muro urged that the Committee explicitly prioritize advanced manufacturing enterprises when it revisits the SBIC’s activities during the broader reauthorization process, noting that not all industries matter equally to America’s prosperity. Indeed, these high-productivity, high-pay innovation industries anchor American competitiveness, and matter inordinately to the nation’s prosperity.

Muro noted it would be appropriate and helpful if the SBA reauthorization would as much as possible nudge the SBA’s—and the SBICs’—services and resources toward the support of advanced industry growth and competitiveness, particularly at a time of renewed economic nationalism in the world.

To illuminate on these points, Muro provided three categories of comments, touching on:

• What advanced industries are and why they matter
• Why they need government financial support
• What such support might look like

To read his full written testimony, click here.