End 8(a) and WOSB Set-Asides—Expand SDVOSB and HUBZone

Federal contracts should reward sacrifice and rebuild communities—not sort Americans by identity

Federal contracting is not a niche government activity. It is an economic market worth more than $630 billion a year. Decisions about who receives those contracts can create businesses, jobs, wealth, and entire local industries.

In fiscal year 2024, small businesses received a record $183.27 billion in federal prime contracts, representing 28.78% of covered federal contracting dollars. According to the Small Business Administration’s FY2024 contracting results:

• Service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses received $32.82 billion, or 5.15%.

• Women-owned small businesses received $31.68 billion, or 4.97%.

• HUBZone businesses received $17.45 billion, or 2.74%.

• Small disadvantaged businesses received $78.10 billion, or 12.26%.

These categories overlap, so the amounts should not be added together. A company can be both woman-owned and HUBZone-certified, for example. Small disadvantaged business awards also are not identical to contracts awarded through the 8(a) program.

Nevertheless, the figures establish the scale of the debate: tens of billions of taxpayer dollars every year.

That raises a question Washington has avoided for too long:

If the federal government is going to prefer one business over another, what should that preference reward?

My answer is straightforward.

Federal contracting preferences should recognize service and sacrifice and create measurable investment in communities that need it most.

That is why the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program is the king of federal set-asides. It is why HUBZone is the smartest. It is also why Congress should end the 8(a) and Women-Owned Small Business contracting-preference programs.

SDVOSB Status Is Earned

Veterans are not a race, sex, religion, or political constituency.

Veterans come in every color. They are men and women, Republicans and Democrats, immigrants and native-born Americans, and people from nearly every economic background.

What they share is a decision: they raised their hands and agreed to serve the United States.

Service-disabled veterans paid an additional price. They sustained disabilities connected to that service. Giving their businesses a greater opportunity to compete for federal contracts is not charity. It is a practical national commitment to people who accepted risks on behalf of everyone else.

That distinction matters.

No one earns his or her race or sex. Those are personal characteristics, not accomplishments. Military service, however, requires a choice, discipline, commitment, and willingness to accept danger. A service-connected disability represents a cost borne while fulfilling that commitment.

Veterans have earned serious consideration in federal contracting.

The SBA’s SDVOSB contracting program allows federal agencies to conduct competitive set-asides and, under defined conditions, make sole-source awards to certified service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.

Eligibility requires more than placing a veteran’s name on company paperwork. A qualifying service-disabled veteran must genuinely own and control the business.

The government awarded 5.15% of its covered prime-contracting dollars to SDVOSBs in FY2024. That is progress—but it should be the floor, not the finish line.

If America can trust veterans to defend the country, America can trust more veteran-owned businesses to help supply it.

HUBZone Is the Smartest Set-Aside America Has

If SDVOSB is the king of federal set-asides, HUBZone is the strategist.

The SBA HUBZone program is designed to stimulate business growth in historically underutilized areas. A qualifying company generally must have its principal office in a HUBZone and have at least 35% of its employees living in a HUBZone.

That is not merely an ownership classification. It is an economic-development strategy.

HUBZone asks a much better public-policy question than “Who owns this company?”

It asks:

Where will this federal contract create jobs, payroll, investment, skills, and opportunity?

When federal contracts encourage companies to operate in distressed urban neighborhoods, rural counties, tribal lands, former military-base areas, and other underinvested communities, government spending can create an economic multiplier:

• Companies establish real operations in communities that need employers.

• Residents gain jobs, skills, security clearances, and career experience.

• Local wages support nearby stores, restaurants, housing, and services.

• Communities gain stronger economic and tax bases.

• Federal contracts can attract additional private investment.

• Workers develop experience that remains valuable after a contract ends.

HUBZone-certified businesses may compete for set-aside contracts and receive a 10% price-evaluation preference in certain full-and-open competitions. The government-wide goal is at least 3%, but HUBZone companies received only 2.74% of covered federal prime-contract dollars in FY2024.

That shortfall deserves much more attention.

The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars buying goods and services every year. Why not direct more of those purchases toward companies that create jobs where America needs them most?

HUBZone does not divide Americans by race or sex. It directs opportunity according to geography and economic need. A HUBZone can benefit Black, white, Hispanic, Asian,

Native American, male, and female residents simultaneously.

That is not identity politics. It is targeted economic policy.

The Uncomfortable Truth About 8(a) and WOSB

It is possible to respect the entrepreneurs participating in the 8(a) and Women-Owned Small Business programs while opposing the programs themselves.

The 8(a) Business Development Program provides business-development assistance

and access to set-aside and sole-source contracts for qualifying socially and economically disadvantaged businesses.

The Women-Owned Small Business program restricts competition for certain federal contracts to certified businesses that are at least 51% owned and controlled by women. The related Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Business category adds financial eligibility requirements.

Supporters of these federal set-aside programs make a serious argument: discrimination, unequal access to capital, closed professional networks, and historical exclusion have limited opportunities for many business owners.

Those conditions should not be ignored or whitewashed.

But a legitimate problem does not make every government remedy legitimate forever.

The question is not whether discrimination has existed. It has.

The question is whether the federal government should continue placing businesses into preferred contracting categories based partly—or entirely—on an owner’s race or sex.

I do not believe it should.

End 8(a), but Continue Race-Neutral Business Assistance

In 2023, a federal court ruled that the SBA’s presumption of social disadvantage for members of specified racial and ethnic groups violated the Fifth Amendment. The ruling did not end 8(a), but it prohibited the SBA from continuing to use that racial presumption.

Applicants affected by the decision were subsequently required to provide evidence of individual social disadvantage. This legal analysis explains the ruling and its immediate effect.

The decision exposed the central weakness of identity-based contracting preferences: a broad assumption about a group cannot reliably establish the circumstances of an individual business owner.

A wealthy, highly educated, and well-connected person can belong to a historically disadvantaged group. A poor person without capital, connections, or opportunity can belong to a group that receives no preference.

Race is an unreliable substitute for measuring actual economic hardship.

Instead of trying to repair 8(a) repeatedly, Congress should end the program’s set-aside and sole-source contracting preferences.

That does not mean ending all assistance for disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The SBA can continue offering training, mentoring, loan support, technical assistance, and business-development services using race-neutral eligibility standards.

But access to restricted federal contracts should not depend on racial classifications or subjective accounts of social disadvantage.

If assistance is intended to address economic hardship, measure economic hardship directly.

End WOSB Set-Asides Too

The same principle should apply to the WOSB program.

Being a woman does not, by itself, establish economic disadvantage. Many women have overcome discrimination and significant obstacles in business. That reality does not prove that every woman-owned business should receive access to restricted federal competitions unavailable to an otherwise identical male-owned company.

The government should never assume that a business needs a preference solely because its owner is female.

A woman business owner who is economically disadvantaged should be eligible for race- and sex-neutral financial or business-development assistance. A woman who is a service-disabled veteran should qualify for SDVOSB. A woman whose company operates and hires in a historically underutilized area should qualify for HUBZone.

The door to opportunity should remain open. The basis for receiving a federal contracting preference should change.

Ending WOSB set-asides is not an attack on women entrepreneurs. It is a rejection of the idea that sex should determine which qualified businesses may compete for a federal contract.

What Trump Has—and Has Not—Done

President Trump has launched the most consequential federal challenge to DEI and identity-based preferences in decades.

In January 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”. The order revoked Executive Order 11246, directed agencies to remove DEI principles from federal acquisition and contracting procedures, and ordered an end to preferences the administration considers illegal.

But Trump’s executive orders did not automatically repeal the statutory 8(a) or WOSB programs.

A president can alter executive-branch policy and enforcement priorities, but programs authorized by Congress generally require congressional action to eliminate.

The Trump SBA has nevertheless made major changes to 8(a). According to a June 2026 SBA announcement, the administration:

• Reduced the Small Disadvantaged Business contracting goal to its statutory 5%.

• Began an audit of high-dollar and limited-competition 8(a) contracts.

• Required thousands of 8(a) participants to submit financial records.

• Suspended or initiated termination proceedings against firms that failed to provide documentation or satisfy eligibility requirements.

• Proposed requiring individually owned applicants of every race to establish social disadvantage through verifiable evidence.

These actions may improve oversight, but they do not end the fundamental problem.

They reform a contracting preference that should be discontinued.

The WOSB program also remains active. The official SBA program page was updated in November 2025, and the government continues to maintain a 5% women-owned small-business contracting goal.

If President Trump and Congress believe federal contracting should be merit-based, they should finish the job.

Congress Now Has a Bill That Would Go Further

On April 27, 2026, Representative Glenn Grothman introduced H.R. 8511, the Ending Discrimination in Government Contracting Act.

The official text of H.R. 8511 would eliminate federal contracting preferences for socially and economically disadvantaged businesses and women-owned businesses while retaining contracting provisions for HUBZone firms and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.

The bill has been introduced but has not become law.

Its structure nevertheless presents exactly the debate America needs:

Should federal preferences be based on race and sex—or on sacrifice, location, job creation, and measurable public benefit?

Congress should debate that question openly and move legislation ending both 8(a) and WOSB contracting preferences.

A Better Federal Set-Aside Policy

Congress and federal agencies should build the next generation of small-business contracting around six principles:

1. End 8(a) contracting preferences. Discontinue 8(a) set-aside and sole-source authority while making race-neutral training and business assistance available to entrepreneurs who demonstrate genuine economic hardship.

2. End WOSB contracting preferences. Eliminate sex-based set-asides while allowing women to qualify for every race- and sex-neutral program whose substantive requirements they meet.

3. Raise the SDVOSB goal. Move beyond 5% and create more meaningful opportunities for capable service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.

4. Raise and enforce the HUBZone goal. The government missed the 3% benchmark in FY2024. Agencies should explain persistent shortfalls and develop corrective acquisition strategies.

5. Measure public return. Track jobs created, HUBZone residents employed, wages paid, workforce credentials earned, facilities opened, and private investment attracted—not merely dollars awarded.

6. Attack fraud in every category. Pass-through companies, rent-a-veteran arrangements, nominal ownership, false HUBZone residency, and shell companies steal opportunities from legitimate businesses and taxpayers.

No federal set-aside should become a permanent entitlement. Every program should have a defensible public purpose, enforceable eligibility rules, measurable results, and serious consequences for fraud.

The Question Washington Should Be Forced to Answer

This debate is not about whether women or minority entrepreneurs are capable. Of course they are.

It is not about denying the reality of past or present discrimination.

It is about whether the government should continue using race or sex as a proxy when it can measure sacrifice, economic hardship, geographic underinvestment, job creation, and actual barriers to opportunity.

SDVOSB recognizes something earned through service and sacrifice.

HUBZone requires companies to put jobs and investment where they can have an outsized effect.

Those are stronger, more inclusive, and more measurable foundations for public policy.

The government should stop asking primarily which demographic box a business owner checks. It should ask what national purpose a contracting preference serves and what taxpayers receive in return.

That is why SDVOSB is the king of federal set-asides.

That is why HUBZone is the smartest.

And that is why Congress should expand both while ending the 8(a) and WOSB contracting-preference programs.

I expect disagreement. Good.

If you believe 8(a) or WOSB produces a public benefit that cannot be achieved through race- and sex-neutral policies, explain why in the comments.

If you believe service, sacrifice, job creation, and community investment are stronger foundations for federal contracting preferences, make that case too.

Let’s have the debate Washington too often avoids:

Should federal set-asides reward identity—or sacrifice, action, and measurable results?