Krishnamoorthi Highlights Importance of SBIR/STTR Programs in Remarks At Small Business Committee Hearing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the CCP was waived onto the House Small Business Committee hearing on Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs to provide remarks about how these programs help U.S. small businesses and tech companies be more competitive against the CCP by offering funding and opportunities to work with the U.S. government. Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi’s remarks also provided insight into the actions taken by the CCP to target vulnerable U.S. businesses.
Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) also provided a statement during the committee hearing.
Below are Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi’s remarks as delivered.
Thank you, Ranking Member Velasquez, my good friend, and of course, my good friend and colleague and leader of our committee, Chairman John Moolenaar, thank you for your leadership.
I want to take this opportunity to speak on the Small Business Committee about the SBIR and STTR programs. In full disclosure, as a former small business person, my former company actually benefited from SBIR programs. And I lived in the Valley of Death frequently. And so it's not a pleasant place to be. And SBIR, thanks to the work of this committee and this government, we were allowed to benefit from those programs and we've developed technology for night vision, both for space and for military applications, and it's helping the war fighter today.
For decades, these programs have served as the backbone of U.S. research and development, empowering small businesses by turning new ideas into real technology. They've helped advances in defense, energy, and medicine. And a study from 1995 to 2018 revealed that these programs have created a whopping 1.5 million jobs, averaging over 65,000 jobs annually. These investments have led to breakthrough technology such as advanced prosthetics for wounded veterans, revolutionary medical imaging systems, and cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions.
I want to say, I echo the sentiments of Chairman Moolenaar. Our adversaries do know the strengths and weaknesses of our innovation ecosystem, and on occasion, they've taken advantage of it and targeted some of the beneficiaries of these SBIR and STTR programs for intellectual property theft.
One notable example was a U.S. company that was a former SBIR awardee that lost $1 billion in shareholder value and 700 American jobs after an employee stole wind energy technology for a Chinese firm.
As another anecdote, I should just mention, Chair and Ranking Member, when I was running this company in the private sector that I mentioned before, we were actually the victims of an attempted theft of intellectual property by CCP-controlled entities as well. So I know this firsthand, it happens, and so we have to do whatever we can to help small businesses ward it off, prevent it, empower them to avoid being victims of CCP intellectual property theft.
Congress and the executive branch have taken steps to address and mitigate many of these threats. For example, the SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022 was an important step forward, requiring greater disclosure of foreign ties and participation in talent recruitment programs. These efforts have proven effective in increasing awareness and bolstering protections, but we cannot afford to be complacent when it comes to competing with the CCP.
As the SBA Inspector General's 2024 advisory makes clear, our current system still relies heavily on self-reporting from companies, which can lead to resource constraints for the government to verify these reports. We must continue to support resources for due diligence so that we can see the results we enacted back in 2022.
Finally, and above all, we must recognize that federal funding for research and technology development is not just an investment in the present, it's a commitment to our nation's future. And actually, Chairman Moolenaar and I just met with Condoleezza Rice yesterday of Stanford, who heads the Hoover Institution, who brought a number of researchers to our office to talk to us about the technology competition, and the fact that the only way that we are going to win this competition is for the federal government to invest in basic research and development, supplemented by these additional investments in SBIR and STTR which build upon progress, the blue sky research in the private and public sector.
I just want to say thank you so much, Chairman Williams, and thank you, Chairwoman Velazquez and Chair John Moolenaar for your leadership, your partnership, your collaboration. Together, we are going to win this competition, this strategic competition against the CCP. Thank you and I yield back.
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