The House Committee has released a “Memorandum of Understanding” between the Biden administration and the state of Michigan, which it fears represents a possibly unconstitutional agreement aimed at registering voters in the critical swing state with a political agenda.
President Biden’s Small Business Administration (SBA) announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in March with the Michigan Department of State in a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” to “promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan,” which immediately raised questions from the committee.
The MOU, uploaded to the Congressional Repository, outlines the cooperation between the Biden administration and Michigan. The state will “provide the Agency access to training resources related to the online Michigan Voter Information Center (MVIC),” and “The Agency shall provide voter registration to all personnel conducting activities under this MOA.”
“This training shall include information on who is eligible to register to vote, the interactions during which Agency staff must make voter registration services available, instructions to Agency staff on how to refer individuals to register to vote online using MVIC, and an overview of additional information that is available to voters in MVIC,” continued the MOU.
The MOU additionally discusses how the Michigan Department of State would “create a unique URL for the SBA to use in drive online visitors to register to vote” and that the Michigan SBA’s field office would allow officials in the state government to facilitate in-person voter registration at the business outreach events by the federal agency.
The committee said they released the documentation in the interest of “transparency.” After seeing the MOU, the committee’s previous concerns that the program is “unconstitutional” and an improper use of taxpayer funds weren’t satisfied.
“Seeing the MOU with Michigan does nothing to ease our concerns about the SBA getting involved in federal elections,” said Roger Williams, Committee Chairman.
“In fact, this agreement confirms SBA employees are preparing to undergo training on how to register voters best than spend their time working to help struggling small businesses,” continued the chairman. “I encourage all Americans to look at this agreement and decide if this is how they want their tax dollars spent. The SBA must end all these electioneering activities on behalf of President Biden and get back to their sole mission of supporting the needs of Main Street.”
The committee referred to the Michigan agreement as the state fundamentally serving as a “campaign arm” for Joe Biden’s re-election, also released maps that envelop the former SBA events, Michigan Department of State data, census data, and publicly reported information of Democrat-targeted voter blocks which they state suggests potential areas that voter registration efforts will target when the effort is rolled out officially.
SBA outreach events happened in counties with greatest DNC target populations
An investigation conducted by the House Small Business Committee found that 22 out of 25 SBA outreach events from January to April took place in counties with the greatest population of Democratic National Committee (DNC) target demographics.
In the meantime, 11 of 15 counties in Michigan that showed increases in voter registration over the past year have ranked highest in population of Black and young voters, according to the committee — two of the most sought-after voting blocs by the left.
“SBA’s MOU with Michigan proves that the agency is more concerned with registering voters than performing its official duties,” said Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
“This outrageous misuse and abuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars will not go unpunished under my watch. Chairman Williams and I will continue shining a light on the SBA and exposing Biden’s bad actors.”
The map data was collected after the committee says it became aware of a video recording of an SBA adviser discussing SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman traveling to battleground states “indirectly campaigning for Biden” and inviting Congressional Democrats on the trips at a greater rate than Republicans.
“Today’s letter is a continuation of our Committee’s investigation into the SBA’s voter registration and electioneering efforts,” said Williams in a press release earlier in the month. “The SBA has shown a serious lack of transparency regarding the travels of senior SBA officials, including Administrator Guzman. Main Street — and the American People — have a right to know what exactly is going on and how the SBA is spending their hard-earned tax dollars. I hope SBA will be forthcoming with us and provide us with the requested documents as we continue our investigation into this matter.”
The coordination between Michigan and the SBA was sparked by President Joe Biden’s executive order in 2021 directing federal agencies to promote “access to voting,” which increased concerns from some that the administration is using the government agency to register votes in a swing state that some believe will be one of the states the November 2023 election hinges on.
The House committee subpoenaed SBA Chief of Staff Arthur Plews and special adviser Tyler Robinson earlier this month after they were no-shows at scheduled transcribed interviews with the committee and didn’t turn over information and documents related to the SBA program.
Plews was set to testify Thursday before the committee but recently retained personal counsel. The committee confirms they are negotiating a new time for him to meet with the committee and provide information on the program.
