During a House Small Business Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) questioned SBA Associate Administrator Jennifer Kim about requests for documents and responses.
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NewsTranscript
00:00efforts.
00:01To start off, I would like to thank Ms. Kim for joining us again. Our members have a lot
00:06of questions regarding the SBA's activities and appreciate you coming before us to give
00:10us the answers we have been seeking.
00:12To put this simply, the SBA's voter registration scheme is a serious problem that is made even
00:18worse by the fact that we are heading into a Presidential election. While Main Street
00:23America is facing a whole host of problems, it is extremely problematic that the SBA spent
00:27over a year drafting this agreement to register voters in Democrat strongholds. It is truly
00:33unfortunate to feel a Federal agency blatantly lose interest in their core mission to focus
00:38on an upcoming election.
00:41The Committee has been investigating these electioneering efforts for some time now,
00:44and the SBA has stonewalled us at every single turn.
00:48To Ms. Kim, I would like to let you know we would rather work with you than against you,
00:53but it is two-way street. You are the individual that signed the MOU with the State of Michigan,
00:57and therefore you are the individual that must answer for it.
01:01So I sincerely hope that you can answer our questions today. We have a duty to the taxpayers
01:05to bring transparency to this issue, and we intend to fulfill that obligation.
01:10So I look forward to today's conversations, and I yield my time back.
01:14Thank you very much.
01:17We will now move to the member questions under the five-minute rule, and I recognize myself
01:22for five minutes. Ms. Kim, are you aware of the memorandum of understanding between the
01:25Michigan Department of State and the SBA?
01:28Yes, I am aware of that.
01:32And you read it?
01:33Yes.
01:34Did you help negotiate it?
01:35I am not a lawyer, so I did not negotiate the legal details.
01:41But did you negotiate the pulp of the MOU?
01:44I weighed in on recommending that we utilize the website to primarily be the way that we
01:50refer people to voter registration information.
01:52And you signed it?
01:53Yes.
01:54So are you in charge of implementing the MOU?
01:56Yes, the Office of Field Operations is, which is the department that I oversee.
02:00So what is the effective date of the MOU?
02:03I will admit I can't remember the exact date, but I believe we signed it in mid-March.
02:09To be clear, it is in effect right now?
02:10Yes, the MOU has been completed.
02:12Because when the administrator was here, my friends on the other side of the aisle insisted
02:16that this MOU was not in effect, but that isn't true, because it was in effect the day
02:20that you signed it.
02:21It is in effect, but we haven't actually done any of the activities that are included in
02:24the MOU yet.
02:25So it wasn't required that you had a unique URL to actually register voters?
02:31The website does exist. We haven't put it anywhere yet.
02:34But the website is up and running?
02:37Well, it's just a link to the Michigan Voter Registration website, which is always up.
02:40So it's live there right now, the link?
02:42The link exists. We, SBA, have not posted that link anywhere for anybody to see.
02:47So it's not on your website right now for us to be able to find?
02:50No.
02:51So if you go right now to michigan.gov backslash USSBA, you can't find it?
02:57That link is the link that we are going to post on our website, but we haven't posted that link anywhere yet.
03:01But the link right now is live?
03:02The link, yeah, the link exists.
03:04So have you registered any voters through there?
03:05No.
03:07Okay, so when do you expect voters to be able to use the URL?
03:09Hopefully soon, Congresswoman.
03:11You don't know, though?
03:13Oh, we're working on implementing it, all parts of the MOU.
03:16So hopefully we'll give you an update when the link is up.
03:21Okay, so according to the MOU, when was the link supposed to be up?
03:25We didn't put a date in the MOU for when the link would go live.
03:29So there wasn't a specific date mentioned.
03:31So the MOU states that the Michigan Department of State will provide SBA weekly updates.
03:36Are you getting those updates?
03:37No, since we haven't started using the website, there's no updates.
03:40So the MOU went into effect March 18th when you signed it.
03:43But even if, according to the agreement, you were supposed to be getting updates, but you haven't gotten any updates?
03:49Well, the updates are associated to the website, which, as I've said, we haven't put anywhere yet.
03:54So it's been March, and it's now April, May, June, July.
03:57So what are you all waiting on?
03:59I wouldn't say we're waiting, Chairwoman.
04:03We're just doing regular course of business.
04:04And it is an important issue for us, but it's not our top priority.
04:07So it's not something that I'm looking at every day.
04:09So what plans of actions does the SBA actually plan to implement the MOU?
04:15You know, I think our strategy with the MOU is actually working to just incorporate the link in activities that we would already be doing on a regular business day at the SBA.
04:24So the idea would be that we'd put the link on our Michigan District Office website.
04:27So if you're going to look for resources in Michigan, it would be there, and you could choose to go to it or not.
04:33So all this is is just creating a link and sticking it on the website?
04:35That's all you all are doing?
04:37That, and we can invite the Michigan Department of State staff to come table at our events.
04:41Okay, so it's more than just the URL.
04:43It's also having folks come to events.
04:46Okay.
04:47Yeah, so I'm sure you're familiar with, we do any number of small business resource fairs, matchmaking events, other activities where we invite resource partners and other local, state, and federal government partners to come table.
04:57So it would be basically the same thing.
04:59The Michigan Department of State would be welcome to table at those events.
05:02Gotcha.
05:03Okay.
05:04So this committee has been requesting documents related to this MOU since March 20th, when the administrator was testing before this committee.
05:09And since then, we've sent four letters that are reiterating our request for documents.
05:13Yet the SBA has failed to substantially produce documents.
05:16The first letter was sent on April 4th, requested documents by April 18th.
05:20The SBA didn't send any documents by the deadline.
05:24The second letter was sent on April 18th, requesting interviews with two SBA officials related to this investigation.
05:28The SBA failed to make them available and forced us to issue subpoenas for their testimony.
05:33The third letter was sent on May 16th, and this time the Senate signed on as well.
05:38We requested documents by May 30th, and to date, we've not received any of those documents.
05:44The fourth letter was just sent last Monday on July 15th, which reiterated all of our outstanding requests.
05:50The deadline for that request is Monday.
05:52Five days from now, will we be able to get the documents by then?
05:56My job is to oversee the field offices. I don't deal with the document requests.
06:00I know that document requests have been made of me, and I've submitted them to the team that's working hard to prepare them for the committee.
06:05So you have submitted them. They just have not forwarded them to us.
06:09But you have been in full compliance with the responding?
06:12Yeah, I reviewed about 200 pages of my own documents that I sent over to the committee.
06:16I understand there's thousands more pages that they are reviewing.
06:18You sent them to the committee, or you sent them?
06:19Oh, excuse me, to our staff that's working to prepare them for the committee.
06:22Okay, so the staff actually has the documents. They just haven't sent them to us.
06:25Well, they have mine. I don't know about the others.
06:28Okay, so it just leads to the question, like, what's going on at the SBA that we haven't received,
06:33especially if you've done your job and you've sent over the documents, why we haven't gotten them yet?
06:39Oh, well, as I said, I'm not in charge of getting the documents to the committee, but I'd be happy to check with them and have them give you an update.
06:46I'm curious what's going on because we've had the administrator, we've had the deputy administrator, we've had you,
06:51and nobody can seem to answer the question. It's always somebody else that's supposed to get us the documents.
06:55Well, I'm happy to answer any questions while I'm here, Chairwoman.
06:59So the chairman, along with the Michigan delegation, sent a letter to the Michigan Secretary of State
07:03requesting documents about their involvement in this MOU, and they responded a day early
07:07with more than 200 pages of their requested communications.
07:10I'm just curious what the delay was, but you don't know the answer to that.
07:15Sorry, no, I don't.
07:16All right, well, my time is up, so I now recognize the ranking member for five minutes of questions.