NVCA Today

On July 30, the Senate Small Business Committee approved S. 3362, the SBIR Reauthorization bill. S. 3362 includes a provision that allows NIH to award up to 18 percent of its SBIR dollars to majority venture-backed companies and permits the other 10 SBIR agencies, including the Defense Department, to award up to 8 percent of their SBIR dollars to these companies. NVCA does not support a policy placing an arbitrary percentage cap on venture-backed company participation. Instead, we believe SBIR awards should go to the most qualified applications regardless of their source of financing.

It remains unclear whether the full Senate will have an opportunity to vote on S. 3362 which would lead to a conference with H.R. 5819, the House passed SBIR Reauthorization bill which NVCA does support. If the Senate does not vote on S. 3362, it is likely that they will provide a short-term extension, most likely 2 years, to the SBIR program which expires on September 30.

The following points are the highlights of the other provisions in S. 3362.

• Reauthorizes the SBIR program for 14 years (H.R. 5819 would extend the program for 2 years);

• Increases the maximum SBIR awards from $100,000 to $150,000 for Phase I and from $750,000 to $1 million for Phase II and require the SBA to make triennial adjustments of the award sizes for inflation (H.R. 5819 would increase the Phase I grant award level to $300,000 and Phase II to $2.2. million);

• Increases the SBIR allocation-the amount of extramural R&D dollars dedicated to the program-from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent over 10 years, although the increase would not apply to NIH;

• Leaves unchanged the SBIR 500-employee standard as a qualification for a "small business concern" and the SBA's affiliation rules (H.R. 5819 would address the affiliation issue in its definition of a "small business concern").