Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski used her chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to defend the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, which she and a small bipartisan group of senators said was vital to their states and the Indigenous communities they represent.
“We’re seeing this heightened scrutiny. The public attention, the media attention, to the 8(a) program. And again, I think there’s just a lot of misconception out there about how it actually works,” Murkowski said at Tuesday’s oversight hearing in Washington, D.C.
The hearing comes as members of the Trump administration continue to criticize the program and take steps to limit or halt contract awards connected to it. At the end of last month, the Small Business Administration suspended about a quarter of the firms registered with the program, citing their failure to turn over years worth of documents by a Jan. 19 deadline as the reason.
Just days before that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called 8(a) “the oldest DEI program in the federal government,” using the acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives, and promised major changes to how the Pentagon handles contracts.
[Related:[Related:Pentagon will take ‘sledgehammer’ to contracting program central to many Alaska Native corporations, Hegseth says]
Murkowski and other speakers emphatically defended the program, which over decades has morphed from a Civil Rights-era tool to create economic opportunities for business owners from historically marginalized groups into one of the primary mechanisms for Indian tribes and Alaska Native corporations to develop major businesses sustained through servicing federal contracts across a broad range of industries.
“This isn’t a new topic for oversight. We have regularly conducted oversight of this program, and that remains important because 8(a), in this senator’s view, is a success story,” Murkowski said in her opening remarks. “It’s not a fraud, as some have mistakenly alleged. And quite honestly that’s terminology that I would categorically reject.”
One through line in the hearing, and one emphasized repeatedly by Murkowski, was that many of the program’s detractors are poorly informed about 8(a). Without naming culprits, she rejected claims she’s heard made that the program amounts to a racial preference scheme steering federal dollars to undeserving and unqualified recipients.
“Lately, we’ve seen some criticisms that 8(a) is an illegitimate DEI program, also concerns over whether revenues and earnings are leading to sufficient community benefits,” Murkowski said, adding that multiple times since the 1980s Congress authorized adjustments to the program to make Alaska Native corporations, tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations eligible. “And that was not based on race, it was not based on DEI, but it was based on Congress’s constitutional authority over Indian affairs, and the longstanding federal trust responsibility to Native peoples.”
Among the four people invited to testify were members of two Alaska Native corporations: Chugach Alaska Corporation President Katherine Carlton and Polly Watson, vice president of operations at Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
In her testimony to the committee, as well as in submitted written remarks, Carlton emphasized that the 8(a) program is “indispensable” for Chugach and its ability to return profits to Alaska Native shareholders.
“These figures represent real, life-changing investments in communities that have historically been left behind,” Carlton wrote. “At Chugach, this impact is tangible and measurable. In 2024 alone, Chugach returned $32.6 million directly to shareholders and communities.”
Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of Cherokee Nation based in rural northeastern Oklahoma, called the program “transformational” during the roughly hour-and-a-half long hearing.
“Today, Indian Country stands at a critical crossroads. For decades, the federal government has recognized that Tribal self-determination requires economic self-sufficiency. That long-standing principle is now facing renewed and unprecedented pushback — pushback that threatens the progress Tribal Nations have worked decades to achieve,” Hoskin stated in his testimony submitted to the committee. “For Cherokee Nation, the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Program has been a key part of our economic self-determination. And the current threats to this program and Native contracting broadly threaten not just our businesses, but the very concept of sovereignty itself.”
Hoskin said that already the critical rhetoric has had a “chilling effect” across their businesses, with federal contracting officers asking members of their companies if they are under investigation for fraud.
“I must tell you that I’m worried. I’m worried that this criticism will stall our progress and become yet another unfulfilled promise by the United States,” Hoskin told the senators from both parties.
In their remarks and questions, Republican senators on the committee generally did not direct blame specifically at members of the Trump administration. They focused primarily on the positive impact Indigenous-owned businesses using the 8(a) program have contributed to their states.
“I am worried, however, about the aggressive and abrupt changes that this administration is taking which will chill legitimate tribal business’s participation in the program,” said Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. “This is one example where we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Language coming from members of the Trump administration and its political allies recently is far sharper and racialized.
“The 8(a) Program was abused during the Biden Administration to benefit favored minority groups at the expense of every other legitimate small business owner in America, including white Americans,” said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a January press release announcing that 1,091 companies had been suspended from the program, which has about 4,300 firms registered in total. “The Trump Administration has acted from Day One to dismantle the discriminatory agenda that put white small business owners at a disadvantage, and to crack down on the fraud and corruption that proliferates within DEI programs.”
Asked how many of the suspended firms are Alaska Native corporations, a spokesperson for the SBA said via email it does not plan to release the names of the firms, which have 45 days to appeal their suspensions.
Days after Hegseth’s social media comments, conservative activist Christopher Rufo published an editorial titled “No White Men Need Apply.” The piece ran in City Journal, a publication of the prominent Manhattan Institute think tank. In the piece, Rufo urged the Trump administration to further curtail the 8(a) program as part of its purge of DEI programs from federal government.
“But the core problem with these programs is not fraud. It is that they systematically discriminate against one group: white men,” Rufo wrote. “Instead of trying to reform 8(a), the Trump administration should abolish it.”
In her closing remarks, Murkowski told the committee that she doubted Tuesday’s testimony would immediately change opinions at the Small Business Administration or Defense Department on the topic of 8(a). But, she pointed out that the hearing was standing-room-only and there’d been a deluge of interest in the program since it was catapulted into the political fray over the last several months.
“I think we still have much more work to do on the education front,” Murkowski said.
date: 2026-02-11 06:33:00