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Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my friends from North Carolina, Senator Budd and Senator Tillis.

Let me acknowledge in front of you that you guys got hit the hardest, but we got hit as well in southwest Virginia, and we have got communities that without this relief are going to die.

I want to echo what both of my colleagues have said in that this RELIEF Act is bipartisan. It is what we do as a matter of course when an entity like the SBA runs out of money. Since October 15, 34,000 businesses across the country have applied for SBA relief. Many of them have gotten approved, but they get a response that says: We will give you money when Congress does its job. This is done as a matter of course, and, frankly, the SBA screwed up a little bit on not getting better numbers before we broke before the election.

Let me take one moment and tell you about a community in particular in southwest Virginia.

Damascus, VA, was an old town. Basically, its economy had disappeared. It came back because there is something called the Creeper Trail, with biking and hiking. I bike this trail.

And, Senator Tillis, parts of that trail are gone now. We have 34 road trestles, and 18 of them are damaged or gone. We have got part of our road that gets to the top of the mountain that is gone as well. I went to Damascus, and I went to 10 jurisdictions in southwest Virginia, but in this little town, every business and home was affected. One guy had three businesses--two restaurants and a bed and breakfast. He paid out of his pocket to try to keep his workers on, even though it will be months before anything happens, even if the money were there.

We owe it to the folks in Damascus, across southwest Virginia, in North Carolina, and across all of the jurisdictions in our country that have been hard hit to do our job. Just like the folks in western North Carolina, the folks in southwest Virginia are proud, and they have an enormous amount of self-help. But this kind of assistance, whether it is FEMA dollars or SBA loans, is not charity; it is their right as Americans. It is what we pay our taxes for. Instead, thousands of Virginians who have asked for that right to apply for this loan have gotten a note, saying: We can't send you the money until Congress does its job.

We have a chance today for unanimous consent to take this bipartisan piece of legislation, to pass it through, and get those businesses the funds they deserve.

I thank my colleague.

I yield back to the senior Senator from North Carolina.

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Mr. WARNER. Will the Senator yield for a question?

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I just want to say, I am prepared to object as well.

And is it not the case, even when it comes to SBA--frankly, if SBA had gotten their act together a little earlier and had a better accounting so we knew how much we needed to refill the pot, we might not have been here.

But this is--if we want to change the law about how the SBA operates and disaster relief, that is a fair debate, and I will take on anyone in this Chamber. In the meantime, whether it is in your community or mine, people are sitting there with a piece of paper that says: You will get your loan, you have been approved, once Congress does its job.

Would not your bill, my bill, our bipartisan bill, if it had been able to go through today, wouldn't those folks in North Carolina, Virginia, and across our country who have been hit be one step closer-- those small businesses--to getting the SBA loans that they have earned, deserved, and should be funded?

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Mr. WARNER.

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