U.S. Small Business Administration head Maria Contreras-Sweet recently made news when she dared to say that counseling services might be more important than SBA’s lending programs.I’ve spent about half of my career in the small-business policy and advocacy sector (including one year at SBA and nine years at the National Federation of Independent Business), so my initial reaction to what Administrator Contreras-Sweet said was “Yeah, no [kidding].” Many of us have known for a long time that loans are not a panacea for small business — far from it! But I’m guessing that wasn’t the reaction of Contreras-Sweet’s colleagues in the White House, since more often than not, small-business-oriented policy coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is all about new, extended or expanded loan programs.