September 2011

MBDA.gov Newsletter

Greetings,

Recently, President Obama presented an aggressive plan to help small businesses get Americans back to work. The American Jobs Act would provide payroll tax cuts for 98% of businesses, a $4,000 tax credit for hiring workers who have been unemployed for more than six months, and extend the 100% expensing tax credit for large and small businesses.

The plan also includes provisions to expand job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of low-income youth and adults through a new Pathways Back to Work Fund that supports summer and year round jobs for youth; innovative new job training programs to connect low-income workers to jobs quickly; and successful programs to encourage employers to bring on disadvantaged workers. 

The President is also directing executive branch agencies to accelerate their payments to small business contractors so they can reinvest that money in the economy and drive job growth.  Additionally, the President is tasking his CFO and CTO with creating a one-stop, online portal for small businesses to easily access government services.

MBDA is also making efforts to enhance the way minority-owned businesses do business with the government. In response to feedback from entrepreneurs, stakeholders and federal agencies, we will open a new MBDA Federal Procurement Center here in Washington, D.C. very soon.  This Center, the first of its kind, will provide services to minority businesses across the country to better position them to access and obtain federal procurement awards. Federal contracting is an excellent way to grow your business, and MBDA is your partner and advocate for doing business with the federal government.

In other exciting news this month, MBDA awarded approximately $4.3 million in funding over the next five years for three new MBDA Business Centers.   The new centers, to be located in Boston, Mass., Minneapolis, Minn., and Riverside, Calif., will join the nationwide network of MBDA Business Centers that provide assistance to local minority entrepreneurs and business owners by offering strategic business consulting services focusing on large public and private contracts, financing, and access to global markets.

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Register now to join us at 29th Annual National Minority Enterprise Development Week (MED Week) Conference, the largest federally sponsored event on minority enterprise development, taking place September 27-30, 2011 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC.  

On Thursday the White House Minority Business Roundtable will feature keynote address from Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama. MED Week will also feature keynote addresses from The Honorable Shaun Donovan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development and The Honorable Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. View Conference Schedule

The MED Week Awards Gala held Friday, September 30 at 7:00pm will recognize the Honorable Robert Menendez, U.S. Senator from New Jersey with the Ronald H. Brown Leadership Award and Mr. James H. Lowry, senior advisor and global diversity director for the Boston Consulting Group, with the Abe Venable Award for Lifetime Achievement.  Mr. Lowry will also hold a book signing on his latest book Minority Business Success - Refocusing on the American Dream.

• October 10-11: Diversity Women's Business Leadership Conference

• October 19: Kansas Business Matchmaker Workshop

• October 23-26: American Bankers Association Annual Convention Business Expo & Directors' Forum

• October 30-November 2: National Minority Supplier Development Council Conference and Business Opportunity Fair

• October 30-November 4: National Congress of American Indians 68th Annual Convention

View Event Calendar

On September 7, 2011, before a joint session of Congress, President Obama outlined the details of the American Jobs Act. This act is a package of proposals designed both to spur employment but also has a number of provisions specifically for small businesses. These include:

• Extending the payroll tax cut to firms by cutting in half their payroll tax on the first $5 million in payroll. Next year, instead of paying 6.2 percent on their payroll expenses, firms would pay only 3.1 percent.

• Extending a provision signed by the President in 2010 which would allow for 100 percent expensing through 2012. This rewards firms for making investments by allowing them to deduct the full value of those investments from their tax obligations.

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David Segura is a man on a mission to not only create jobs, but to also help to keep them in the United States.  His company, VisionIT was developed out of his community activities, which included volunteering weekly to teach youth in Detroit about the field of technology and the growing Internet trends.

His deep commitment to the community and to using the talents of diverse populations in the field of information technology is an integral part of his company’s success.

The Detroit, Mich., based company was founded in 1997 by Segura. VisionIT delivers consulting and technology services to corporations and government agencies. Among the many accolades VisionIT has received, this year it was ranked in Hispanic Business Magazine's Hispanic 500 as the 27th largest Hispanic-owned business in the U.S., and for the ninth year in a row it was ranked in the magazine’s annual list of the 100 fastest growing Hispanic businesses in the U.S.

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