Member-only story
SBA Nominee Dilawar Syed is a Proven Advocate for All Entrepreneurs
Obstructionist Senate Republicans are blocking his confirmation in spite of widespread support.
After a very difficult 18 months, small businesses are facing yet another gauntlet: A holiday season beset by the ghosts of COVID-19 past, present and future.
The pressure to have a great year is overwhelming as never before- further complicated by supply-line issues, inflation, and a persistent labor shortage.
All three of those challenges have hurt small businesses far more than their larger counterparts. Big corporations can more easily absorb and spread out price increases. They can often afford to pay more, or offer better benefits. Greater buying power gives corporate giants access to supply lines about which smaller companies can only dream.
Small business owners are facing another obstacle this holiday season; another sort of labor shortage.
This challenge isn’t as obvious as not being able to find enough employees to run the store, or enough dough to make the doughnuts, or having to raise prices to cope with higher operating costs; but it is hurting small businesses nevertheless.
There is a serious labor shortage at the Small Business Administration. It isn’t due to a lack of qualified candidates: It is due to the obstructionist tactics of Senate Republicans who are blocking a well-qualified nominee without reason or need.
It isn’t the candidate: Biden-nominee Dilawar Syed is everything lawmakers could want in a deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration.
His list of qualifications and experience reads like a wish-list for potential SBA leadership candidates; decades of experience in Silicon Valley as a successful tech entrepreneur- in parallel with an equal amount of time in civil service at the local, state and federal level helping other small business owners and entrepreneurs.
All nominees should be so ideally suited.
For the past year in fact, Dilawar Syed has been doing exactly what a handful of others have been committed to doing, to their credit: Helping connect struggling small business owners with the vast reservoirs of financial help and resources…
