The FSB hopes
the conferencewill set the agenda for the future of enterprise, growth and skills.
Karen Mills is looking forward to attending. In 2009 she put her career in venture capital and private equity on hold to serve the President as the 23rd Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA). She returned to the private sector last September.
The SBA is a federal agency that provides small businesses with access to capital and government contracts, counselling and training.
"The President appointed me right at the beginning of his term, five years ago," she told Central Lobby.
""The economy was in an enormous recession and we were facing a tremendous credit crunch. Small businesses were unable to get loans and from day one his priority was small business, because it creates jobs.
"Half of the people who work in this country are in small businesses and small businesses account for two of every three new jobs.
"We had to make sure they had the capital to survive the recession."
Mills said the President's decision to elevate her position at the SBA to cabinet rank and placing her on the National Economic Council, the White House's primary economic team, shows just how important small business was to the recovery plan.
"There was a tremendous economic anxiety that pervaded the country."
She says small enterprises were "critical to the growth strategy, and that is also true in the UK. The economy is different from 50 years ago, when there were large factories and big businesses."
Instead, small, high-growth businesses are driving innovation. However, in 2009 good American small businesses were worrying about survival, not growth, as they saw their credit lines pulled.
"We took very bold action," Mills said.
"The President was focused on making sure that we had the resources to take action and that we understood what the issues were - small businesses were getting strangled."
"We eliminated all our fees and almost immediately our lending, which had been falling, was turned around to two record high years."
Mills said capital and counselling are "the bone structure" of the SBA.
"The SBA is small agency with big mission, and quite important in the US. It has over $100bn in its portfolio of loan guarantees and we were able to streamline and simplify the loan process. We took out hundreds of pages red tape and made its programmes very cost-effective.
"One of the lessons is how do you reach small businesses all across the country who are good and strong and give then access to capital at low cost.
"We used a public-private partnership PPP with 5,000 US banks and that allowed us not to have to build our own infrastructure, in every city and town access to SBA loan is available.
"We have 100 offices around the country where we are face to face with potential small businesses and 9,000 business development centres at community colleges and universities. They give advice and help access a bank.
"We operated a lean and mean operation that has tremendous on the ground presence and delivers what small businesses need."
Mills said early federal recognition of the importance of small business was "very important to the recovery".
"Small businesses are critical to the growth strategy; that is why having a continuous presence at the table at the highest level is the new organisational requirement if you who want to have prosperity."
She added: "It is absolutely critical to have a seat at the table in the US both as we came out of recession and now as we build the economy of the future."
Mills said the UK "has been very innovative in a number of areas" when it comes to supporting SMEs.
"I have to stress creating jobs are the primary currency when the UK looks at creating growth and a critical component in creating multiple eco-systems and driving innovation across the country.
"Those kinds of policies will become central in the next set of economic discussions.
"In many administrations small business is handled in multiple places within the government.
"They need a central voice for entrepreneurs and small businesses in order to have a thoughtful comprehensive set of effective government policies."
The FSB policy conference -
Small Business and Government: Delivering enterprise, growth and
skills
is
on Monday 27 January in Westminster. Find out more information and watching the event live on the day, on
the website