I want to thank Chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, other distinguished members of the Committee, and members of the National Guard and Reserves for this opportunity to inform you of SBA’s efforts to support service members and reservists participating in the Transition Assistance Program.

First, I would like to express the personal gratitude of SBA Acting Administrator Carranza, myself and all SBA employees, to those members of the National Guard and Reserves who are with us today not only for their service, but also for the sacrifices their families make when their loved one is activated for military service. We thank you for your service in defense of our great nation.

As the Associate Administrator for the Office of Veterans Business Development (OVBD), I am the lead official at the Small Business Administration (SBA) responsible for our veteran outreach initiatives. I am happy to report to this Committee the tremendous level of work that the SBA has done for our nation’s veterans and our work with the Transition Assistance Program (TAP). TAP was established to meet the needs of separating service members during their period of transition into civilian life by offering job-search and career assistance and related services.

There are four components of TAP, and I will address two in my testimony. The first is the segment for TAP-eligible service members who meet with a DOD counselor after filling out DD Form 2648 (for Active Component Service Member), or DD Form 2648-1 (for Reserve Component Service Member). Today, DD Forms 2648 and 2648-1 both now include information relating to SBA services, which are also available through our website (http://www.sba.gov), and contain information about available SBA Loans.

The second component of the TAP program I will address is the actual multi-day DOL-TAP seminar managed by DOL field staff or contractors. SBA is continually working with DOL in an effort to increase SBA’s participation, utilizing both SBA district offices staff (which includes Veteran Business Development Officers) and SBA Resource Partners like SCORE, SBDC and VBOC’s. SBA currently participates in TAP seminars nationwide.

We have also taken a number of other significant steps beyond TAP to ensure that discharging and deactivating service members and reservists have access to, or are informed about SBA services, and are provided information necessary to consider entrepreneurship as a potential vocation.

In 2001, SBA initiated the Military Reservists Economic Injury Disaster Loan (MREIDL) program which provides low interest disaster loans with very flexible terms to small businesses suffering economic injury when a Reservist who is an essential employee is activated.

Additionally, the OVBD implemented the Self Employed Reserve and Guard (SERG) initiative as we realized that small business owners in the reserves may be called to Title 10 duty in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11. As part of that initiative, OVBD established a website specifically for Reservists (http://www.sba.gov/reservists), and we began working with the Department of Defense’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Reserve Affairs, as well as the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) to conduct outreach to Reserve component members.

Also, as part of SERG, we have distributed hundreds of thousands of the SBA Reservist Fact Sheets and designed and produced comprehensive Pre and Post Mobilization Business Planning Guides, disabled veteran procurement guides, SBA Program Guides, and Patriot Express Loan Program Guides to organizations and individuals that interact with Reserve component members. This has included Reservists Mobilization and De-Mobilization sites, DOD-TAP program sites, Military Family Support Centers, ESGR state offices, SBDCs, SCORE Chapters, SBA district offices, state Departments of Veterans Services, veteran service organization service officers, State National Guard Adjutants Generals and hundreds of other locations. In the last year alone, OVBD has received requests for and has distributed more than 100,000 “Reserve and Guard Kits,” containing all the above information and more.

In 2007, SBA launched the Patriot Express Pilot Loan initiative (Patriot Express), and has distributed hundreds of thousands of Patriot Express brochures nationwide, including to DODTAP locations.

Patriot Express specifically targets veterans, service-disabled veterans, Reserve Component members, discharging service members eligible for TAP, spouses of the above, spouses of all active service members and widows of service members who died in service or who died of a service-connected disability.

In the first year of the Patriot Express, more than 850 lending partners signed up to offer the program and SBA guaranteed more than 1,600 loans totaling more than $164,000,000.

In cooperation with the Department of Labor and the Department of Defense, we are providing discharging service members and spouses with information regarding entrepreneurship, SBA services, SBA programs and SBA resource partners. These materials are contained in both the DOL TAP Manual and in a number of different sections in the TurboTAP online system.

With the cooperation of the Department of Labor, we included a special section in its National Hire Veterans First Web site which specifically targeted to entrepreneurship and highlighting SBA services and programs for veterans and reservists.

Our program materials are also included on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Veteran Enterprise website and we have recently initiated a more formative relationship with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Services program. This will give us access to a pool of 100,000 service disabled veterans some of whom have the desire and potential to become entrepreneurs.

In closing, the SBA is dedicated to continually improve and increase assistance for veterans and reservists. We are working to improve our programs, and will be announcing additional program enhancements in MREIDL, SBDC and Veterans Business Development programs in the near future.

While we are proud of the work we have done, and the improvements we have made, we also recognize that we can never do enough to fully repay the sacrifices that our service members and their families make. We will continue to improve the depth of our programs for veterans and reservists and we will continue to grow our ability to reach, offer and provide assistance to America’s true patriots as they choose to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this information.