Stories the budget tells
Four arcs on the Small Business Administration's money, each assembled from public records. Every figure renders live from the same extracts the rest of the monitor uses, and every claim links its receipt.
Arc 01 · topline × the carve-out
What “the SBA budget” actually is
Two figures get quoted for SBA's FY2027 budget, and they differ by exactly one account. This monitor carries both and reconciles the gap.
Arc 02 · loan subsidy × loan volume
A few hundred million that moves tens of billions
The single most misread thing about SBA is the gap between what it APPROPRIATES and what its loan programs MOVE. They are not the same number, and never should be added.
So a sub-$200M administrative line stands behind tens of billions in lending. This monitor keeps loan volume strictly out of the budget-authority spine — the distinction is on the appropriations page.
Arc 03 · the firehose × the audit
When money moves faster than it can be traced
In the pandemic, SBA briefly became one of the largest spending lines in the government.
The cost of moving that fast shows up in the audit record.
That is the case this monitor makes: budget data that traces to its source by construction. The full record is on the audit page.
Arc 04 · OMB Historical Tables
A small agency with two enormous years
OMB's Historical Tables carry SBA back to 1976, and almost the entire series fits in a band a few billion dollars wide.
The spikes are one-time crisis lending; the negatives are credit-subsidy reestimates. The base is small and steady. The series is nominal: OMB's Table 5.2 publishes no constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one. See the full arc on the history page.
Source: Each claim links inline to its primary source — the SBA Congressional Budget Justification (corroborated by CRS), OMB Historical Tables, USAspending, and SBA OIG / GAO oversight records · tone: documented mechanics with receipts — not advocacy · provenance →