Accelerating Access to Capital Act of 2016
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I was just listening to my friend from New York, and I would like just sort of a little consistency. At one point we talk about job growth and the desperate need for more job growth, but then how many have come behind the microphones today and talked about a little technical problem we have. We are shedding-- closing--more small businesses than we are opening, and this has been going on for years now.
So those of us who were involved in the JOBS Act a few years ago--and remember, it was a bipartisan discussion saying we desperately need to find ways to move capital to the little businesses that are just trying to find some cash, some way to grow, some way to expand. And then you look at a piece of legislation like this, and let's be brutally honest with each other, these are little tiny things that do good, but this isn't necessarily a revolution of Dodd-Frank. It is not a revolution of the capital markets. These are silly--excuse me, these are simple-- simple--logical, obvious steps.
Let's take a look at some of the small offerings. If I am reaching out to people who know me, know my business, it is limited to, what, 35? That is somehow a risk to the financial stability of the country that I am a small entrepreneur and I may be able to reach out to people who know me and my business and ask them to invest in my capital formation so I can grow and create those jobs and expand the business as I desperately need?
How about cleaning up what we all agreed to, what, 4 or 5 years ago in regards to reg D offerings of how it mechanically was going to work? Remember, we sat there over and over for weeks discussing how reg Ds were going to work, and then the SEC decides they are going to change what we all thought the understanding was. How is that a danger to capital markets, fixing where we already thought we were?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. In some ways it breaks my heart, and I wish we could get over this game we play around here where it is a Republican piece of legislation, and a couple of my friends on the left feel obligated to stand up and oppose it, even though you and I know when we had the conversations of building parts of this just 4 years ago, 5 years ago, these were the very things we talked about we were agreeing to.
We desperately need economic expansion if we are going to keep the social entitlement promises of this society, and to stand in front of even the small attempts to expand the economy--we need to get on the same page here.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source