Heckuva job, Hector

Marilyn Musgrave: Clueless on small business.

This was in Business Week:

"I think very highly of chairman Manzullo, and he recommends our new guy, Steven Preston. He's from Illinois, and he has a good background in finance. From what I've heard, Mr. Preston specifically is going to focus on disaster assistance. After the scrutiny that Mr. Barreto got, Steven Preston will be very conscientious in that area. I'm not saying Barreto wasn't. I'm just saying that you get a lot of scrutiny when people are in desperate straits. I think Mr. Barreto has served us well, and I look forward to this administrator. "

Marilyn Musgrave sits on the House Small Business Committee. It supposedly oversees things, like say, the Small Business Administration. That's where George Bush sticks fundraising cronies, where they proceed to screw up when it's crunch time.

So when Marilyn Musgrave sends dispatches from Planet Marilyn about what a great job everyone's doing on disaster assistance at SBA, it's time to take a closer look. Because the Small Business Administration, not to mention George Bush & Co., has blown it so big on Katrina assistance.

Hector Barreto, who "has served us so well," was called "The SBA's version of Mike Brown" because he just so unqualified to get the job in the first place. It's no accident it was called "The Slow Business Administration":

The committee chairwoman, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), began the session by pointing out that the Small Business Administration had, at that time, processed only 10 percent of 28,540 applications for disaster loans from small businesses in the Gulf Coast area and had approved only 3 percent of them. Mr. Barreto responded with a long and self-pitying description of how difficult things remain in the Gulf, how emergencies are not really his responsibility and how much his agency's performance had improved lately.

At one point, Barreto forgot to tell Congress it needed money and had to shut down. Duh.

And on Barreto's watch, the abuse of 9/11 loans was so outrageous, even Congress had to step in and do something. The Associated Press issued the ass-kicking that probably got Barreto out of there:

The government's $5 billion effort to help small businesses recover from the Sept. 11 attacks was so loosely managed that it gave low-interest loans to companies that didn't need terrorism relief — or even know they were getting it, The Associated Press has found.

And while some at New York's Ground Zero couldn't get assistance they desperately sought, companies far removed from the devastation — a South Dakota country radio station, a Virgin Islands perfume shop, a Utah dog boutique and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops — had no problem winning the government-guaranteed loans.

For Marilyn Musgrave, this is call "success."