BOISE — An Obama administration political appointee at the U.S. Small Business Administration recently said this year’s across-the-board federal budget cuts are, “not what we need right now,” at the SBA.

With the federal budget sequestration requirements that took effect March 1, the SBA’s fiscal year 2013 budget was shrunk by 5 percent, or $92 million — belt-tightening viewed as unnecessary by Calvin W. Goings, the Northwest Regional Administrator for the small-business agency.

Sequestration advocates say the federal agency budget cuts will alleviate the multitrillion-dollar national debt.

Goings, however, said during an interview that among “indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts” for federal agencies delivered by the sequester are reductions in the SBA’s support services to small businesses while the United States struggles to escape the deep financial hole created by the Great Recession of last decade.

“We’re taking indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts just like every other federal agency,” Goings said. “And that’s not what we need right now. What the economy needs is predictability and all the supports, and not kind of this indiscriminate across-the-board cutting that we’re seeing through sequester.”

Specific estimated SBA nationwide service reductions outlined by Goings:

“Our estimates are that 30,000 to 40,000 … entrepreneurs will not be able to find counseling (in budget year 2013) at one of our centers as a result of sequester,” he said. Last budget year, one million U.S. entrepreneurs received counseling from the SBA.

A decrease of roughly

$500 million annually in SBA-engineered loans — through a lending network of financial institutions — for small businesses for the current federal budget year ending Sept. 30. Goings, who is based in Seattle, said the SBA in budget year 2012 produced a record $30 billion in SBA-backed loan guarantees nationally for small businesses.

An annual downturn of an estimated $4 billion from the last budget year’s $88 billion in government procurement contracts facilitated for small businesses by the SBA.

“Not looking at layoffs at SBA, but fewer dollars, fewer courses to provide fewer seminars and workshops,” said Goings, the SBA administrator for Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska under the Obama administration. “So, we’re managing the best we can. We’ve, you know, we’ve been smart with the funds that we’ve received, and … SBA, like any federal agency is prepared to take a common sense hair-cut. But, again, indiscriminate, across-the-board (cuts) I don’t think is doing anybody any good.”

Those kind of federal budget cuts are especially unnecessary at the SBA, in Goings’ estimation, at a time when he said the U.S. economy coming out of the recession has churned out 36 consecutive months of month-over-month “positive job growth,” during which 6.4 million private sector jobs have been created nationally.

“The signs are positive, you know, the worst is behind us, but we still have a lot of work yet to do,” Goings said. “And, the (Obama) administration feels very strongly that now is not the time to let off the gas.

“Now is when we need to continue pushing the accelerator.  And so, what we don’t need are more self-inflicted wounds on the economy, such as sequester. And, the sequester is, and will continue to have an impact on the Small Business Administration.”