Capturing All Small Businesses Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Madam Speaker, today I rise in support of H.R. 5130, the Capturing All Small Businesses Act, bipartisan legislation that I sponsored to protect our Nation's small businesses against being prematurely forced out of the small business category due to sudden growth.

This legislation lengthens from 12 to 24 months the time period used by the SBA to determine the average number of employees a business has. Alongside revenues, the calculation of the average number of employees is one of the size standards used by SBA to determine if a business is still small.

By extending SBA's calculation period for employee-based size standards, Congress recognizes that the current 12-month timeframe can have detrimental effects on small businesses that experience temporary spikes in employment. These additional 12 months recognize that many factors, including large contracts or seasonal contracts and seasonal employment, can cause a small business to take on extra employees but only take them on temporarily while, in fact, they are still a small business for the majority of year.

In my home State of Texas, which has a great economy, small businesses make up 99.8 percent of all businesses and employ 4.7 million Texans.

When I am back at home, one of things that I do is a program called Marc Means Business, where I go and visit businesses to learn about what other people do in their jobs. It has been great for me to be able to do this. I have had this experience working alongside constituents and employers and employees in the area.

Small business is really the lifeblood of our economy, so anything that we can do to help them will be a benefit for the entire State of Texas and the economy.

I want to end my remarks by giving a special thanks to Congressman Hern from Oklahoma for being a colead of this legislation, and I want to give a special thanks to Chairwoman Velazquez for really taking small business seriously. As the chair of this committee, she came down to Dallas/Fort Worth and had an opportunity to talk in person with small businesses about some of the things that they need. I just really want to thank her and Ranking Member Chabot for taking the time to really take small businesses in this country seriously.

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