Sponsors (5)
The bill creates a funded, state-connected national forum intended to amplify small-business input into federal policy and improve continuity, but it ties the conference’s existence and timing to voluntary funding and narrows participation in ways that could delay action, limit perspectives, and raise conflict-of-interest concerns.
Small-business owners gain a formal, ongoing national forum (including an electronic collaboration system) to identify, prioritize, and refine problems and solutions that can inform federal policy.
States and Members of Congress can directly appoint delegates, giving local businesses clearer representation and a direct channel into the National Conference process.
Conference activities are funded through a dedicated mechanism (gifts, bequests, donations, and specified authorities), reducing the need to draw on unrelated federal appropriations and lowering risk to other federal budgets and taxpayers.
The President’s authority to call the conference depends on amounts collected under the new funding provision, so insufficient collections could delay or cancel the conference and interrupt the benefit to small businesses.
Limiting participation to owners, officers, or employees of small businesses selected through specified channels may exclude other stakeholders (academics, advocates, customers), narrowing perspectives and weakening the inclusiveness and legitimacy of recommendations.
Relying on gifts, bequests, and donations to fund the conference could create real or perceived conflicts of interest or influence if contributions are not strictly vetted, undermining public trust in the conference’s independence.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Updates timing, funding conditions, participant eligibility, and delegate selection rules for a national White House Conference on Small Business, and broadens statutory purpose language.
Introduced December 18, 2025 by Brad Finstad · Last progress December 18, 2025
Amends the law that governs the White House Conference on Small Business to set a new scheduling window for a conference between December 31, 2025 and December 1, 2026, ties the President’s authority to call the conference to funds collected under a newly added funding provision, and revises who may participate. It narrows participation to delegates selected at State conferences and regional meetings who are owners, officers, or employees of small businesses; specifies categories and counts of delegates (one appointed by each State Governor/Chief Executive, one appointed by each Member of Congress/Delegate/Resident Commissioner, 100 appointed by the President, plus delegates elected at State Conferences); requires alternates; updates statutory language to broaden purposes and corrects typographical and grade-reference errors (to GS–15).