Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2021
Floor Speech
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Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this budget resolution because small businesses need help now. This pandemic has already darkened hundreds of thousands of storefronts on Main Streets throughout America. A recent study found that 800 businesses closed daily between April and September last year.
Every day without Federal relief, this pandemic shutters businesses, destroys lives, and wipes out good-paying jobs. COVID is devastating Black and Latino entrepreneurs, dropping the number of businesses by 41 and 32 percent, respectively. Small businesses do not have time for drawn-out negotiations nor debates over process. They need help immediately.
Mr. Speaker, today's budget resolution gives us a critical tool to deliver urgently needed aid to small firms and the American people by passing President Biden's American Rescue Plan.
This resolution will grant us the means to provide small businesses, particularly those that are underserved, with billions in new funding for loans, grants, and support programs.
This resolution will enable us to appropriate desperately needed funds for the national strategy to crush the virus.
This resolution would allow us to make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs by expanding unemployment benefits and extending the eviction moratorium.
I welcome Republican support for these efforts.
Mr. Speaker, what we are proposing are commonsense measures to offer a lifeline to struggling Americans. We must prepare to move forward. The price of inaction is too steep. The longer we wait, the more lives COVID will take. The longer we wait, the more businesses this pandemic will destroy. The longer we wait, the more people in my district suffer.
We need a big, bold package. That is why I strongly encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I wish that the other side would care about the $2 trillion tax cut package.
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Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, when we look at how much businesses in this country are suffering today and how many businesses are shutting their doors, it is our responsibility to help them get whole. The only way that consumers are going to go into the malls and the restaurants is when they have peace of mind that we have done everything to protect them.
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