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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, as ranking member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, I rise today to oppose the nomination of Casey Mulligan to be Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the Small Business Administration.

On April 2, the committee reported out the Mulligan nomination by a vote of 10 to 9. Not one Democrat voted in support.

Dr. Mulligan represents yet another radical departure from the norms we should expect from government, courtesy of the Trump administration.

The Office of Advocacy was created to serve as an independent voice for small businesses. It is charged by statute with examining how Executive actions affect small businesses. However, Dr. Mulligan, an economist at the University of Chicago, subscribes to an ultraconservative school of thought that opposes regulation in almost any form.

Dr. Mulligan actually rejects regulations that protect the environment, safeguard fair treatment of workers, and keeps products from injuring consumers. He has a decades-long track record of questioning basic protections that most Americans take for granted. He has cast doubt on the need for a mandatory minimum wage. He called into question paid sick leave and unemployment insurance. He vigorously opposes ObamaCare and even went so far as to make the absurd argument that ObamaCare was responsible for making the great recession even worse.

This is the leadership that President Trump envisions for the independent Office of Advocacy. But this office is just too important to entrust to someone like Dr. Mulligan.

As I stand here, countless small businesses across the Nation are facing the threat of closure because of President Trump's destructive trade war. Yet since coming under the control of this administration, the Office of Advocacy's Trump-appointed interim leadership has not yet held a single roundtable about tariffs or even, as far as anyone can tell, published a single word about how tariffs might be harming small businesses across our Nation.

We have 13 million small businesses in America. Do you think that would be something that the Small Business Administration would be thinking about?

How is it that an office whose sole purpose is to call attention to how small businesses are affected by administration policy has failed to mention tariffs even once? Are they talking to small businesses or are they looking over their shoulders and saying, ``No, we are just going to remain silent about the obvious,'' worried that anything that runs counter to the Trump administration's policy will lead to their dismissal.

That is my concern, and that should be America's concern. If the interim leadership at the Office of Advocacy is too scared to raise the obvious point that small businesses are being crushed by the Trump tariffs, we can only imagine what the President's handpicked nominee will do if he is confirmed.

The Office of Advocacy needs strong, independent leadership that can stand up to the administration when small businesses are under threat.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination so that our Nation's 34 million small business owners have a real advocate looking out for them and not just another Trump yes-man.
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