Thinking about getting a Small Business Administration loan with your business plan or securing a government contract through them? Then you may want to take a look at what they doled out to start-ups and small businesses last year. This morning the SBA released its annual contracting scorecard for 2007 and, for entrepreneurs, it looks pretty good.

Small businesses raked in a record $83.2 billion in federal prime contracts last year, according to MarketWatch. The federal government also awarded 22% of their coveted contracting dollars to small business as well, which was just shy of their 23% goal.

The release of the scorecard today comes on the heels of a scandal revealed last summer where, through a loophole, huge corporations were securing government contracts meant for small businesses. The new head of the SBA, Sandy Baruah, spoke to that concern—albeit in a circuitous way—during today's announcement:

"This year, the SBA made it more challenging for federal agencies to meet their goals, due to our initiatives to cleanse the federal contracting database of bad data, and ensure that small businesses receiving small business contracts meet the definition of small. This is good news for small businesses because it means the government will need to work harder to get federal contracts into the hands of small businesses."

We appreciate the sentiment. But we're not holding our breath.