United States Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), chair of the Senate Committee on Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship, sent a letter to Karen G. Mill, the administrator of the Small Businesses Administration (SBA), requesting help for small businesses suffering from the oil spill currently dumping 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
In her letter she urges the SBA “to organize a lending briefing on the coast of Louisiana for the fisherman and other impacted businesses and to coordinate with other federal agencies including the Department of Commerce (Commerce) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to make the recovery process as easy as possible.”
She outlined the need for clearer guidelines differentiating between businesses eligible for assistance from the USDA and the SBA, pointing to past bureaucratic difficulties that business faced receiving aid after the 2005 and 2008 hurricanes.
