Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment. Employee- owned businesses are uniquely structured where the employer and the shareholders and the executives benefit, as well as the workers.

There are different forms of making sure that employees can participate in the success and capital growth of a company. Those include co-ops, cooperatives; ESOPs, which stands for employee stock ownership plans; stock options; profit sharing. There are a number of ways to do it.

But some of the key findings are that, over time, employees at employee-owned businesses, whether they are partially or entirely owned by employees, have greater success. The companies do better and the workers do better: higher wages; more savings for retirement; more sustainability; and more profitability as an enterprise, because it improves retention rates and employee morale.

I think that employee-owned businesses are an important market- oriented mechanism to reduce the wage gap between executives, shareholders, and workers. But it can be difficult for a business to transition to an employee-ownership model or a business structure that allows for accessing financing and capital markets to make that transition happen.

That is why I am sponsoring this amendment today to encourage the Small Business Administration to provide technical assistance, as well as education and outreach about existing programs, one of which is called the loan guarantee program, which is available to employee-owned businesses.

SBA loans are a critical resource for many small businesses, and the employee-owned loan guarantee program is underutilized because a lot of lenders don't understand the unique nature of employee-owned businesses, especially smaller banks.

ESOPs can be a very compelling model, as can the other models of employee ownership. There are a number of successful employee-owned companies in the district I am honored to represent in northern Colorado, including New Belgium Brewing.

SBA loans are actually a critical part of helping companies make that transition to employee ownership, especially for small and midsized enterprises.

I encourage the adoption of my amendment to help employee-owned businesses access financing options that will help small businesses grow, and help our communities retain community, local employee ownership of small businesses. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this amendment to highlight the role that SBA can play in making employee ownership options a real-life occurrence for more companies and people across our country.

Mr. Chairman, of course, there are a number of pieces of legislation, many of them bipartisan, under the jurisdiction of different committees with regard to how we can remove barriers to employee ownership in our economy. But this simple one before us today would simply encourage the SBA to provide technical assistance under current authorized, funded programs, to help make sure that there is a greater awareness about the opportunities of employee ownership, both for economic productivity as well as for reducing the equity and wage gap in our country.

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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