Enhancing Small Business Research And Innovation Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chair, as you know, small businesses are the engine that will repower America's economy. Research and innovation in the small business venue have greatly contributed to advances in science and technology across the board. In fact, the city of Schenectady in my congressional district, the ninth largest city in New York State, was nicknamed ``The Electric City'' after Thomas Edison moved his company Edison Machine Works there in 1887, which was later followed by the opening of GE headquarters in 1892.

Today we are considering H.R. 2965, the Enhancing Small Business Research and Innovation Act of 2009. I rise in full support of H.R. 2965. This program has proven to be one of the most successful Federal programs for technological innovation in United States history, delivering more than 60,000 patents and hundreds of valuable innovations in agriculture, in defense, in energy, in health sciences, homeland security, space, transportation and other fields.

Through Phase I and Phase II SBIR, countless jobs have been created in the capital region of New York State. It is through programs such as SBIR that my district has developed the underpinnings of support for a boom in high technology innovation and economic development. In fact, just over a month ago a constituent of mine, Dr. James Woo of Interscience, Inc. in Troy, New York, was at a national conference in Virginia. This conference was to showcase Navy SBIR Phase II projects to program managers and large defense contractors for transition. A great majority in attendance supported protecting the small business opportunities that have been part of this program. The reason is because small, innovative companies should have a genuine place at the Federal table. This place is for backyard inventors and local contractors, for small and very small businesses where the research is not likely a breakthrough in technology but a breakout of implementation.

At a time when our national unemployment is at 9.5 percent, we should do everything in our power to strengthen small businesses that generate 70 percent of new jobs in our country. It is important that we continue to favor small, innovative businesses.

There's simply no more effective way to boost our economy than to support the small business innovation that creates new jobs, new technologies and new American industries.

If the tavern was the cradle of democracy, then the garage is the cradle of enterprise.

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