Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Ms. MENG. Madam Speaker, I rise to bring attention to the critical need to support women-owned businesses. Women-owned businesses are driving economic growth in our nation. Since 1972, the number of women-owned businesses increased nearly 3,000 percent. Between 2018 and 2019, U.S. women of all backgrounds started an average of 1,817 new businesses per day, representing 42 percent of all businesses. These businesses generate $1.9 trillion and employs 9.4 million workers. As of 2019, women of color account for 50 percent of all women-owned businesses, and these businesses in particular are growing at a significantly faster rate than women in general and all businesses. The social and economic benefits of encouraging and supporting women entrepreneurs are undeniable and enormous. Despite the incredible ingenuity of women entrepreneurs, women still face significant barriers to business ownership due to unmanageable expectations for work-life balance, implicit biases against women in STEM, and limited access to capital. That is why I am introducing the Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise Act of 2019--a bill to reauthorize a federal agency (of the same name) that would help coordinate federal resources and grow women-owned businesses. Better coordination is critical to making sure women business owners and entrepreneurs receive the assistance they need to help start, grow, and sustain their business enterprises. The Interagency Committee's responsibility will be to look at the behavior of the federal agencies in how they support, expand, and strengthen resources and programs for women-owned businesses-- ultimately making sure our federal government is doing all that it must to support women entrepreneurs. First established in 1979, the ICWBE led several federal agencies in the development of policies to assist women business owners. While the Interagency Committee was initially maintained through both Democratic and Republican administrations, it has been inactive since 2000 with no chairperson at the helm. My bill would amend Title IV of the Women's Business Ownership Act to reauthorize the Interagency Committee by making sure a Chairperson is at the helm. Getting the Interagency Committee back to functioning status would help increase the ability of the federal government to provide targeted assistance to women entrepreneurs so they can achieve their business goals, while ensuring this entity carries out its mission to support and reinvigorate women- owned businesses. Madam Speaker, women entrepreneurs are the key to engineering new and better innovations in today's global economy--and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
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