Republicans pitch Trump's domestic policy agenda in Iowa, but some entrepreneurs aren't yet sold

CNN

3 days ago

When Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler touted that her agency guarantees approximately 2,000 small business loans every week, Laura Pager, a small business contractor who says she has lost out on millions of dollars in work this year in the wake of the Department of Government Efficiency's slashing of the federal government, wrote it down in disbelief.
Pager, the president of an Illinois-based contracting firm that contracts with agencies across the federal government, was sitting in the third row at an event hosted by GOP Sen. Joni Ernst with Loeffler and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin designed to help small businesses and entrepreneurs learn more about federal and state contracting opportunities in the Trump administration.
The optimism she was hearing on stage was not reflecting her reality.
'I don't know who the 2,000 small businesses are that were approved every week,' said Pager, the president of Gale Construction Company. 'I could tell you it's not mine.'
'Since January 20, 2025, SBA has approved 46,430 504 and 7(a) loans for over $24 billion - as well as 25,032 disaster loans for $3.8 billion. This equates to nearly 2,500 loans per week,' SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons told CNN.
The small businesses event hosted this week by Ernst at Iowa State University comes as her party has been tasked with using Congress' month away from Washington to sell President Donald Trump's massive agenda. That effort, on the heels of Trump's unprecedented overhaul of the federal work force and the GOP's historic cuts to the social safety net amid other provisions in his 'big, beautiful bill,' has already met some resistance from members of the public.
In her nearly three decades of experience, Pager says she has not seen anything like the current environment for small businesses.
She's lost out, she said, on approximately $6 million in work this year after DOGE pulled contracts as part of its federal cost-cutting efforts — one to secure a federal building in Pittsburgh that houses the Internal Revenue Service and Army Corps of Engineers and the other to fix the HVAC at an airport control tower in Maine. She said that a go-to contact for her at the SBA, a region-based business opportunity specialist who helps small businesses navigate the federal government, retired with no one appearing to replace her
'We don't have the number of resources and the people to go to anymore,' said Pager, who said she voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and works mostly with Republicans. 'Agencies we work with generally have a much more limited staff now. And I feel like they're flustered.'
The event on Tuesday laid bare the competing realities for small businesses trying to work with the Trump administration. While Trump and his Cabinet are seeking to promote business in the United States and tout the president's signature legislative achievement so far, their push to downsize the federal government has left some business owners and entrepreneurs with questions as they try to navigate a changing environment.
It's requiring a threading of the needle for agency heads and GOP lawmakers —Republicans, who have broadly called for slashing federal spending, now find themselves having to make the case for why small businesses should find their agencies a worthy investment partner. In Iowa this week, they looked to frame the debate.
On top of Loeffler and Zeldin's visits, Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins visited the Iowa State Fair over the weekend to announce new rural development investments and Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to visit the state later this week.
'We are reshaping the federal government to be more responsive to the private sector,' Loeffler argued.
Ernst, who's facing reelection in 2026 and wouldn't comment to CNN Tuesday whether she plans to defend her seat, says her third annual 'Made in America Expo' was designed to help businesses in her state develop direct relationships with the decisionmakers in the federal government. But as chair of the DOGE caucus in the Senate, she argued that cutting the size of the federal government will help small businesses grow.
'We know that federal government is not the answer when it comes to issues at the local level. Those that are most responsive are at the local level,' she said. 'So, downsizing the federal government, pushing some of that outward, especially into the heartland where we actually have people that do want to work, provide efficient services for the federal government, that's the opportunity that we should be providing.'
Ernst's event sought to bring key politicians and representatives from across the federal government to Iowa as a chance to level the playing field and create face-to-face interactions. Many small business directors for their respective agencies were in attendance.
Charlie Smith, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, complimented Ernst and the agency heads for their emphasis on creating small business partnerships, suggesting the issue of creating that connection is not necessarily new.
'That's always been the struggle, is to make the opportunities known to small businesses,' he said. 'And I think this administration's got a number of initiatives that are looking to do exactly that.'
To hear Loeffler, Zeldin and Ernst describe it, the Biden administration was completely wrong in how it tackled small business development.
'We inherited a very big mess,' Zeldin claimed.
Part of their pitch in how they are making opportunities better for small businesses was highlighting the extensive cuts they've made to their agencies to eliminate what they saw as waste and emphasizing their desire to get government out of the way to encourage more manufacturing and investments in the US.
The administrators and Ernst pointed to wins from Trump's tax and spending law, which will create several tax breaks that benefit small businesses, such as allowing businesses to fully and immediately deduct the cost of building new manufacturing facilities. The trio also credited Trump with keeping overall inflation tame in July and pointed to investments like the more than $90 billion from private companies across tech, energy and finance to turn Pennsylvania into an artificial intelligence hub.
Ernst, who chairs the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, promoted her new, bipartisan legislation that would increase the maximum loan limit for small businesses in an aim to boost domestic manufacturing. She hopes the bill will get a final vote when the Senate returns in September.
Meanwhile at the event, Iowa GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra stood in front of a crowd of small business leaders and entrepreneurs to make his case for why they should support Trump's sweeping tax and spending cuts law.
'Maybe some of you don't always think it's beautiful. I do,' Feenstra quipped, before ticking through a list of tax breaks that are geared toward helping small businesses specifically.
Feenstra, who has launched an exploratory committee for governor, is not facing a tough reelection battle should he remain in the House. But two of his Republican Iowan colleagues, GOP Rep. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, are running in some of the most competitive House races in the country for next year's midterms and are having to be even more delicate in their pitch.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise was in Iowa this week making public appearances with Nunn and Miller-Meeks and fundraising on their behalf. Speaking with CNN at the Iowa State Fair, Scalise and Nunn laid out their perspective to voters and provided a window into how Republicans are trying to sell Trump's landmark legislation – instead of getting pulled into discussing the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.
Throughout his remarks on Tuesday, Zeldin argued that the EPA can both protect the environment and grow the economy after the administration's move to repeal the so-called endangerment finding that planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels endangers human health. But businesses in Iowa, a Republican stronghold that uses more clean energy than many blue states, must also contend with Republicans' rollback of clean energy tax credits.
Iowa Republicans now face the challenge of having to defend the elimination of the renewable energy tax credits in Trump's trademark legislation that they sought to protect.
Scalise and Nunn argued the elimination of those credits doesn't mean they don't support renewable energy, but argued the elimination was designed to create an even playing field and ween the US off of foreign energy. Nunn also pointed to the tax credit for biofuels that he worked to get in the final bill.
'We've got a great opportunity here in Iowa with wind. We are the number one producer and consumer of wind. We've made this work,' Nunn told CNN. 'It's most important that we're not dependent on foreign energy anymore. And this bill delivers that.'
Scalise addressed the legislation's deep cuts to Medicaid and defended the work requirements Republicans put in place, which Democrats have seized on in their messaging against the law.
'By putting in place responsible work requirements, now it's going to help the truly needy be able to get better care in programs like Medicaid. And then the folks that are going to go get work, which is a good thing by the way, are going to be able to get work and get a job and get health care in the private sector, which is going to be even better than Medicaid,' he said.
But for some in attendance at Ernst's event on Tuesday, what the officials were selling wasn't the full picture.
Victor Santana, who owns a Chicago-based company that helps hundreds of small businesses nationwide secure federal contracts, said he spent most of the event introducing small business owners to representatives from federal agencies.
'They are lost,' Santana said of the business leaders he met at the event. 'They can't figure out which way is up, which way is down.'
Santana, who said he has been in the business for 24 years and prides himself on his government contacts, said he's gotten few answers about replacements or a path forward after the slashing of the federal workforce.
'It's like, 'Wait a minute, so and so's not there? Well, who is taking over? Who is in charge?'' Santana said of his conversations with agency contacts. 'That's scary because a lot of these small businesses need to know. It's very hard to work with government and get those answers.'
For some in the audience, Zeldin's message of rolling back environmental regulations is cause for concern.
Jordi Quevedo-Valls, who co-founded a startup marketplace designed to facilitate the buying and selling of small businesses, said the EPA's rollback of environmental protections is concerning and has a real impact on how businesses move forward.
'I mean that I completely disagree with. I mean, the science is there,' Quevedo-Valls, who said he 'reluctantly' voted for Harris in 2024, told CNN.
From Fairfield, Iowa, Quevedo-Valls said he is happy with some of the Trump administration rollbacks but called the decision to phase out clean energy tax credits 'terrible, terrible, terrible.'
The emphasis from Ernst and the Trump administration officials on creating new businesses left Tanner Heikens wanting clarification. Heikens said he voted for Trump, but has things he likes and doesn't like about the administration.
'I'm glad that they're pro-business, but I think that they're pushing creation of business and not worrying as much about existing businesses, especially in the labor force that we're in,' said Heikens, who works at an Iowa-based food manufacturing company that feeds between 50,000-70,000 people a week in the restaurant and health care industries.
'In the manufacturing world it is tough already, and if you're putting a bunch of money into new businesses, that's just thinning the herd already.'