By Human Events

In a little-noticed news item last week, it was pointed out that the Obama Administration awarded a $28.5 billion small business contract to General Dynamics, which is a Fortune 500 firm and America’s fourth-largest prime contractor. With 92,000 employees and $29.3 billion in sales during Fiscal Year 2008, General Dynamics can scarcely qualify as a “small business.” But, according to the American Small Business League, more than $100 billion in federal small business contracts have been going to some of the largest corporations in the world: Xerox, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace (BAE), the South Korea-based Ssangyong Corporation, and the Italy-based Finmeccanica SpA (73,000 employees). During the ’08 campaign, candidate Obama hailed small businesses as “the backbone of our nation’s economy” and declared “it is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.”